BANGLADESH FLOODS: WHO TAKES THE BLAME?

Experts at the Floods Information Centre in Dhaka began to get concerned towards the last week of August because of heavy rainfall in Bangladesh and in the catchment areas of the 23 tributaries of the Brahmaputra, Ganges and Meghna. On 31 August, flood levels rose dramatically and vast sections of the country went underwater. By 14 September, the flood was at peak, submerging 80,000 sq km of low-lying land, two thirds of the entire country.

The losses were staggering, far worse than the cyclone of 1985 and the floods of 1987. Thousands died. Millions of hectares of crops were damaged. Nearly 45 million people, over 40 percent of the population, lost something: a house, land, crops or cattle. This included 1.2 million homes, one hundred thousand cattle, 61,483 kilometres of roads, and 8,393 schools. The quantifiable loss alone was put at a staggering U$ 2 billion.

Even as the rescue and rehabilitation efforts began, the search was on for the cause of the floods and a possible remedy. And the Himalayan region loomed large on both counts. Was the land erosion in the hills of Nepal and India to blame, or was this a freak once every 70 year occurrence, against which there was no protection? Should there be high dams built in Nepal and India, a link canal to connect the Brahmaputra to the Ganges, more levees, or vigorous reforestation of the high slopes?

The need for an answer to these questions was urgent. The big fear was that the media would soon lose interest and that the administrators would find it politically , expedient to lie low and forget the emergency.

The international concern was immediate and genuine, although of short duration. While the Bangladeshi Government struggled to cope with what Foreign Minister Humayun Rasheed Choudhury noted was "the worst flood in memory", the United Nations called for a unified international response and for appropriate measures to "assess, predict, prevent and mitigate" floods.

Diplomatic  Offensive

President Hussain Mohammed Ershad went on a diplomatic offensive through Kathmandu, New Delhi and Thimphu, urging joint action. Not successful in getting Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi to agree to a regional approach, Ershad opted for second best, which was to set up task forces with each of the three countries. Nepal and Bangladesh, in deciding to jointly assess measures for multi-purpose water schemes, agreed that any durable solution would have to involve all the countries of the region.

While the cumulative work of the separate task forces cannot substitute for a regional study, it might provide enough reliable crossborder data to begin work on a viable flood warning system. But beyond that lies the need for a regional flood control strategy, which is where the boat of regional diplomacy runs aground. Uncomfortable questions of national sovereignty arise and the fuzzy laws governing the use of international rivers are of little help.

Apportioning Blame

Generally, during an average monsoon, over a fifth of Bangladesh, 29,000 sq km, gets submerged. To what extent was this year´s greater flood a natural phenomena and how much was it manmade, up river?

There is general agreement that deforestation in the Himalaya, caused by peasants in search of fuelwood and fodder or by timber merchants, has robbed the slopes of vegetation, increasing rainwater runoff. But opinion is divided among climatologists and ecologists and soil scientists as to whether that additional runoff is significant enough to explain increased flooding. "Deforestation is the obvious culprit for those who like pat answers," says an Indian environmentalist, "but questions of the natural elements, the environment and human impact are complex by nature and blame not so easily apportioned."

However, the complexity of the subject did not hold back some Dhaka newspapers, which carried a rash of "blame the mountain" commentaries. "Bangladesh is being destroyed by its neighbours," said B.M. Abbas, a former minister for water resources, whose idea it was to build 12 large reservoirs in the Himalaya, most of them in Nepal. International experts such as M´Hamed Essaafi, the United Nations´ Disaster Relief Coordinator, also seemed to have little doubt. He blamed the floods on deforestation upriver, as did Tom Elhaut, director of projects in Bangladesh for the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). Elhaut predicted that catastrophic flooding was bound to recur because of the destruction of the Nepali forests.

"It is not that simple. Deforestation has increased water in the rivers, for sure, but not enough is known to blame Bangladesh´s woes entirely on Himalayan peasants," says a Nepali ecologist. In his view, the Nepali Government had set the stage over the past decade by overstating the deforestation scenario in order to receive more foreign aid, "and now the world is pointing its finger at us".

All Soil, No Rock

Among those who think that the case of deforestation is being oversold is Steve Brichieri-Col urnbi, a British consultant with many years of experience in Bangladesh. He says the real focus should be on planning long term river and flood control strategies. Others say poor land and water management within Bangladesh is exacerbating the problem and that flood control programmes have been on the desperate "mend and patch variety".

To begin with, flood control measures are inherently limited in a country that is a huge, flat flood-plain just a few feet above sea level. Since Bangladesh is all soil and almost no rock, it is difficult to build embankments and dikes that can withstand a river in spate. But even the embankment schemes that exist have been built in relative isolation and there is no integrated national approach, according to the London based Panos Institute. Diversion of rivers like the Gumti, Khowai, Muhuri and Feni have raised the flood level through increased siltation.

Although the rivers originating in Bhutan, India, Nepal and Tibet did exacerbate matters, some climatologists believe that the main cause of the disaster was torrential rains within Bangladesh itself, reports the New York Times. Others are reaching beyond the region to propose a link between floods in the Sub-continent and changes in the global climate brought about by the "greenhouse effect". A few even think that the climatic phenomenon known as El Nino in the Pacific Ocean off Chile could be precipitating "active" monsoons in South Asia.

Experts also say that embankments and other construction along river banks constrict flow. Water then backs up upstream, inundating low-lying land. Another reason why floods might seem more critical now than before is that national governments assign a monetary value whenever a calamity occurs. The reporting by regional and international media is also better than a even a decade ago.

In the absence of regional data, it is not even clear which river is more to blame, the Ganges or the Brahmaputra. While Bangladesh has proposed high dams to block the tributaries of the Ganges, the Economist reports that the real culprit might be the Brahmaputra, whose average flow is said to be more than that of the Ganges and the Indus put together.

Silt, Dams and Tremors

Ironically, says a Save the Children Fund advisor, for all the devastation this past summer, Bangladesh will probably reap a bumper crop in the spring because of the life giving silt brought down by the rivers. In fact, there is fear that storage dams, while holding back floods, could also retain enough silt to deprive the populous Ganges-Brahmaputra delta of its  annual replenishment of nutrients, as has happened in Egypt´s Nile delta below the Aswan Dam.

The international development agencies think they have an answer to the flood problem and want to get started. The World Bank says it is ready to conduct feasibility studies for a dam and barrage system once the regional countries agree to cooperate. According to an estimate, such a system would cost. U$ 24 billion. Some have suggested a cooperative arrangement such as exists between countries of the flood prone Mekong delta. Foreign Minister Choudhury, who has called for a water authority among the five regional countries, recently spoke of getting technical help from the Netherlands and West Germany, "which j have cooperated successfully in taming the Rhine".

Cost and Benefit

As early as 1982, noted Nepali geographer Harka »Q1 Gurung made a plea to leave the Himalaya in its natural state. "Building of 3 large dams is questionable ow.iiig to the excessive * silting of the rivers and the | high seismicity of the region," he said. The tremors that rocked eastern Nepal and Bihar state in late August acted as a reminder of the unstable Himalayan geology. Some experts point to the Idukki reservoir in Kerala state, which has reportedly induced frequent earthquakes since it was constructed in 1978.Amidst all the talk of expensive dams and canals, the question of cost and benefit is paramount in the mind of Peter Witham, a UNDP official who served in Bangladesh during the 1987 flood and has also worked in Nepal. "You have to ask to what extent to invest in preventive measures for a disaster that might happen once every 70 years," he told a reporter.

Dipak Gyawali, a Nepali engineer and economist, deplores the exclusive focus on "technical fixes". He says, "This almost reflex, action thinking, which equates flood protection with engineering works, has prevented other perhaps more sustainable approaches from being considered. Non engineering solutions, both biological and social, must be explored to see if better results can be obtained."

All the proposed infrastructures for flood control would be highly visible measures. But if deforestation is the problem, then the answer perhaps is reforestation. Unlike big dams, barrages, canals and artificial reservoirs to name national personalities after, reforestation has no glamour to it. Us impact is not immediate and it does not require international credit in the billions. Reforestation is difficult and "messy" because it involves people and politics at the grassroots. Ultimately, it involves turning the hill economy around. It is always easier to build a dam.