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EUROPEAN nations have joined with the US and Japan in enthusiastically
endorsing the World Bank’s plan to help Bangladesh to protect itself against
recurrent flooding. At a conference in London last week, so many countries
offered funds for some of the plan’s projects that the $150-million programme
of pilot studies was oversubscribed.

The bank’s Action Plan will run from 1990 to 1995, setting up a series
of projects costing about $500 million which could start within the five
years. After this, there would be a phased flood protection programme, probably
involving the construction of embankments on the country’s main rivers,
the Ganges, Meghna and Brahmaputra (‘Floods of aid for Bangladesh’, New
Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ, 2 December). One of the proposed schemes would involve 4000 kilometres
of embankments, costing $10 billion and taking 20 years to complete.

A. K. Khandker, the Bangladeshi minister for planning, said he was ‘delighted
by the moral and material support of the entire international community’.
He said: ‘Floods used to help our crops, but lately their magnitude has
increased dramatically and the scale of flooding has become totally unacceptable.’

Flood protection is a prerequisite for the survival of Bangladesh –
one of the world’s poorest, most densely populated and least developed countries.
Now that donors have pledged funds for the preliminary work, researchers
can begin the task of assessing how a system of embankments would affect
the communities of many hundreds of thousands of people who live alongside
the rivers on the expansive flood plains.

To build the embankments, it would be necessary to acquire up to 20
000 hectares of land. About 180 000 people would be affected, and some households
would lose their homestead and become landless. The planners want to make
sure that the interests of people living in the flood plains are taken into
account when feasibility studies are drawn up.

The surveys at six sites (three on the Brahmaputra and one each of the
Ganges and Meghna) will investigate how people living near the rivers or
on chars – newly emerged islands – in the channels, have adapted their lifestyle
and agricultural practice. The early studies will also examine the whole
question of land acquisition, including compensation.

Britain’s minister for overseas development, Lynda Chalker, opened the
conference. ‘We must avoid setting up projects which effectively control
flooding but which adversely affect the livelihood and lifestyle of the
Bangladeshi people,’ she said.

A baseline assessment of the environmental impact of the embankments,
costing $200 000, will start at once. The cost of other such studies and
monitoring is included in the plan’s regional, pilot and feasibility studies.

Fisheries are crucial to Bangladesh as a source of food and income.
About 2 million people are employed full-time in catching fish and 70 per
cent of the rural population takes part in seasonal fishing. In 1987/88,
fish exports were worth $140 million. Yet, despite the obvious value to
the economy, little is known about the type of habitat the fish require,
so it is impossible to estimate how the proposed embankments will affect
their viability. Studies to improve a database are planned to start at once
and will lead to a $2-million pilot project tostock certain areas with fish
for study. This will probably begin in mid-1991.

The chairman of the conference, Atilla Karaosmanoglu, who is the World
Bank’s vice president for Asia, said that Bangladesh’s complex problems
of flooding presented challenging technical and social issues. ‘Every effort
will be made to ensure that there is no adverse effect on the ecological
balance,’ he said. ‘The people of Bangladesh will be consulted at every
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