Life of a River

To strengthen and support the dialogue process and create awareness, shared vision and consensus.

About the project

Bangladesh and India share three major river systems: the Ganga, the Brahmaputra and the Meghna. Along with their tributaries, these rivers drain about 1.75 million sq km of land, with an average runoff of 1,200 cu km. The GBM system also supports over 620 million people. Thus, the need for cooperation on trans-boundary waters is crucial to the future well-being of millions of people.

That is precisely the motivation for the Ecosystems for Life: A Bangladesh- India Initiative (Dialogue for Sustainable Management of Trans-boundary Water Regimes in South Asia) project. IUCN wishes to promote a better understanding of trans-boundary ecosystems between Bangladesh and India, by involving civil society in both countries and by providing a platform to discuss issues common and germane to the region. The overall goal is an improved, integrated management of trans-boundary water regimes in South Asia. This four-and-a-half year initiative is supported by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Ecosystems for Life will develop, through dialogue and research, longer-term relationships between various stakeholder groups within and between the countries. It will develop a common understanding to generate policy options on how to develop and manage natural resources sustainably such that livelihoods and water and food security improve. Inter-disciplinary research studies will be conducted by bringing together experts from various fields from both countries so that relevant issues are holistically grasped. The initiative centres around five broad thematic areas:

• Food security, water productivity and poverty
• Impacts of climate change
• Inland navigation
• Environmental security and
• Biodiversity conservation

Promoting trans‐boundary water cooperation requires multiple actors and agencies to be brought on board to understand, manage and build consensus. Most importantly, to enable efficient trans‐boundary water management, all boundaries of knowledge, systems and thought need to be overcome. Hence, apart from concentrating on creating ‘situation analysis’ on each thematic areas in the first phase, the project has also commissioned a study on analyzing media reportage on trans‐boundary water issues such as the Teesta/Tista, and also document the interaction of media with the scientific community and researchers regarding such issues.

IUCN hopes this multimedia platform on the Life of a River: Yarlung Tsangpo-Brahmaputra-Jamuna-Meghna will be useful to academics, researchers and practitioners working on water and people both within the region and beyond.