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Kathmandu Monday August 13, 2001 Shrawan 29, 2058.
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Appeal for good water science
Laxmanpur, Rasiyawal Khurd Lotan embankments built on the
Nepal-India border have caused much grief in Nepal. Managing the waters of the eastern
Himalayan-Ganga (east of Mahakali) requires a more sensitive understanding of this
region’s hydro-ecology than the mindlessness of earthworks. The normal monsoon here
is punctuated by intense cloudbursts in selective patches such that almost half the rain
during this season can fall in about fifteen hours. Such a pattern of precipitation,
coupled with fragile in the world. This hydro-geological process has made the lower
reaches of the basin one of thick alluvium, which floats on groundwater.
In such an environment embarking on building embankments that
"jacket" rivers to control floods is a wrong approach with an inappropriate
technology. It leads to drainage congestion and waterlogging with severe adverse impacts
on the land and its people. In Bihar, embankments have waterlogged one million hectares
and degraded the livelihood of about two million people. In Bangladesh, following the
floods of 1986 and 1987, a Flood Action Plan (FAP) was proposed to embank the
country’s myriad water courses. Thankfully, following objections from alert social
auditors, this plan was scrapped.
Attempting to control floods with earthen embankments along
the length of the rivers is bad water science, which fails to address how rain falling
outside of the embanked area is to be drained. For this region of the Himalaya-Ganga, land
and water in its multiple forms (precipitation, surface and groundwater flows) must be
managed conjunctively. Drainage capacity of water courses must be enlarged rather than
constricted. The vulnerability of people in risk-prone areas must be addressed by
enhancing their resilience capacity. Indeed, development itself needs to be re-oriented
towards technologies that such societies can themselves adapt and manage. Mindless pursuit
physical structures and earthwork contracts will only improvise an already unfortunate
region even more.
Ajaya Dixit and Dipak Gyawali
Editors, Water Nepal
Kathmandu, Nepal |
