Some lessons from the untimely Teesta flood

An untimely flood wreaked havoc on the Teesta basin in Bangladesh, beginning on the night of Wednesday, October 20. A sudden onrush of Teesta water flooded the area to a level that has not been witnessed since 1968. Several people have died, while thousands of people have lost their crops, their houses have been damaged and destroyed, their clothes and other belongings have been washed away, and the infrastructure of the area has been damaged to a large extent.

The apparent cause of the flooding has been unusual rainfall in the upper catchment area of the Teesta River (Sikkim and northern parts of West Bengal), leading to a sudden increase in the river flow, which was then passed on to Bangladesh by the Gajoldoba Barrage operators by opening all the gates. According to local sources, the water reached the Teesta Barrage at Dalia by the evening of Wednesday, though the Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB) officials did not wake up to the information and the situation till Thursday morning, when they too decided to open the gates of the Teesta Barrage. However, by that time, the water accumulated at the head of this barrage had burst out of the river confines and flooded the area. The volume of the water was so huge that even opening the gates and the flood bypass—so the river water could spill over into the downstream reaches (from Teesta Barrage) of the river too—was not enough. The entire region of greater Rangpur was affected.

The affected people will need a long time to recover and rebuild in the aftermath. They need immediate assistance to shore up their lives. In particular, they will need clothes and blankets to survive through the impending winter. The local activists of Bangladesh Poribesh Andolon (Bapa) and Teesta River Bachao Andolon are at the forefront of the relief operation, using whatever resources they could muster, working from Wednesday evening. However, the people in the affected area will need broader and more significant assistance from the government agencies.

Given the government's disaster management capability and other resources, the relief and rehabilitation operations will probably go well, and the situation will be stabilised. However, greater questions still remain: What is the guarantee that a similar frightful episode will not happen again soon? What can Bangladesh do to avoid such catastrophic floods and manage to cope with them when they actually happen?

Bangladesh's rivers and water resources face threats from three sources: global, regional, and domestic. All these combined to produce the latest nightmare in the Teesta basin. The global threat worked through climate change, causing the untimely torrential rainfall in the Teesta upper catchment area. The regional threat worked through the decision of the Gajoldoba Barrage operators to open all the gates, apparently without timely and adequate consultation with the BWDB officials of the Teesta Barrage. The domestic threat found manifestation in the fact that the country is not prepared to accommodate unexpected large volumes of river overflow in a safe and controlled way. What can Bangladesh do to mitigate threats from these three sources?

Regarding climate change, there is no doubt that Bangladesh has to make its voice stronger in the international fora, and as the chair of the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF), Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has an important role to play in view of the upcoming COP26. It can be hoped that Bangladesh will live up to its expected role at this conference. However, one does not have to be too pessimistic to realise that the impact of Bangladesh's initiatives in halting and reversing climate change and its various effects is going to be limited. That being the case, it is important to think what Bangladesh can do to mitigate the regional and domestic threats.

Regarding the regional threats to the Teesta River, it is well-known that Bangladesh has been striving for a long time to reach a treaty with India. The focus of the proposed treaty has been, however, on the share of the dry season flow—as was the case with the Ganges sharing treaty signed in 1996. What the recent event has shown is that this focus needs to be extended to cover river control throughout the year. It is not appropriate for India to build a controlling structure and then use it for its own interest only. Bangladesh should have a say in its management, because it has to bear the brunt of the decisions made. To add force to this demand, Bangladesh needs to sign the 1997 UN Convention on Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses. Article 7 of this convention forbids upstream countries from carrying out such interventions in shared rivers that cause "significant harm" to lower riparian countries. Other articles—such as Articles 20 and 23—also provide protection to lower riparian countries.

Of course, signing the UN convention alone will not solve the problem. It will also be necessary to bring about some changes in Bangladesh's water diplomacy with India. So far, Bangladesh has conducted this diplomacy relying on goodwill. However, as German statesman Otto von Bismarck said, international relations are based on interests. Just as India is leveraging its upstream location to impose its will on Bangladesh regarding rivers, Bangladesh may also leverage its geographical location to reconsider issues of transit, trans-shipment, port facilities, and even trade and employment. Otherwise, Bangladesh will be increasingly at the mercy of the barrage operators of India.

While Bangladesh has limitations regarding what it can do to mitigate global and regional threats, it does not face such limitations regarding domestic threats, which are unfortunately self-created. What the recent Teesta flood episode has shown is that Bangladesh has to have a lot of storage space for river overflows. The active floodplains of the country used to serve as this storage space. They also served as additional passageways for the overflow to pass on to the sea. Unfortunately, following the Cordon Approach for the past 70 years, Bangladesh increasingly disconnected the floodplains from the rivers. To cope with the new normal created by climate change, Bangladesh has to reverse this process and reconnect the floodplains with rivers by adopting the Open Approach. It has to adjust the living conditions and economic activities in the floodplains to suit the open conditions.

The recent Teesta flood also shows the inappropriateness of the proposed Teesta River Comprehensive Management and Restoration Project (TRCMRP). According to a YouTube video prepared by the vendor company, Power China, the Teesta River, under this project, will be artificially narrowed from its current average width of about 3km to only 0.8km. Though it has been suggested that the depth of the river will be increased to 10 metres through dredging, analysis makes it clear that this gain in depth will be nullified in a few years by about 49 million tonnes of sediment that the river carries each year. What that means is that the river will be incapable of holding normal peak season flows, not to speak of unexpected large volumes like the one we've seen over the last few days. Going ahead with this project will therefore only make matters worse.

What is instead necessary is to rejuvenate the connections of the Teesta River with all its tributaries, distributaries and waterbodies of its basin so that wider storage capacity is restored. Meanwhile, the changed strategy of water diplomacy may help to restore the dry season flow of the river, thus triggering a natural process of restoration of the original, healthy morphology of the river. These are the few lessons from the current usual Teesta flooding.

Dr S Nazrul Islam is an economist, founder of Bangladesh Environment Network (BEN), and the initiator and vice-president of Bangladesh Poribesh Andolon (Bapa).