UBC Theses and Dissertations

UBC Theses Logo

UBC Theses and Dissertations

Water policy and governance for the empowerment of river basin communities in rural Bangladesh Hossen, Mohammad Anwar

Abstract

Agricultural communities in the Ganges Dependent Area of Bangladesh are facing extreme hardships due to current water management practices, environmental degradation, and agricultural modernization programs that benefit the elite but disadvantage the majority. India is a major contributor to these problems because of its diversion of large amounts of water from the Ganges River before it reaches Bangladesh. The governance systems within both Bangladesh and India are best understood as ecocracies, that is, highly centralized and bureaucratic systems in which resources are controlled by elite groups following neoliberal development goals. This style of governance has marginalized the majority of farming households who now find themselves unable to make their voices heard. The hardships they are now facing are severe enough to be classified as human rights violations. In this study I describe the effects of regional hydropolitics on water management, focusing on three large engineering projects, the Farakka Barrage built by India on the Ganges River, and the Ganges-Kobodak Gorai River Restoration Projects in Bangladesh. I also describe the traditional livelihood strategies and local ecological knowledge of farming households in the community of Chapra, Kushtia District, Bangladesh, and the rapid displacement of traditional practices by a commoditized system created through government intervention. I gathered information about local knowledge and farming practices during a year of fieldwork in 2011-12, through focus group discussions, in-depth case studies of four farming households and a survey in which 259 households participated. In addition to this primary data, I collected extensive secondary documents from the government of Bangladesh pertaining to water management, agricultural modernization and institutional structures. My field data reveals that the right to water of the vast majority of Chapra farming households, as defined by United Nations Conventions and international customary law, is being systematically violated and that this violation in turn has led to multiple human rights violations in the areas of employment, food, education, health care and housing. I conclude with recommendations for how these problems could be solved through application of human rights principles and greater community inclusion in governance processes at international, national, and local levels.

Item Citations and Data

Rights

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada