BANGLADESH should ratify the 1997 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Water Courses to secure the nation’s water-sharing rights from neighbours, voiced the concerned experts in a view-sharing meeting in the city on Saturday. A report carried in a national English daily on Sunday said, experts and green activists raised the demand considering that the UN Convention would enable Bangladesh to get its due share of waters in the common rivers, mostly originating in upstream India. We share the view of the experts as the UN Convention is expected to become a law on August 17 this year, containing provisions helpful for Bangladesh, which is situated at the downstream of the rivers that mostly originated in India and China.
The report quoted the experts as saying that the government did not ratify the Convention due to two reasons – the foremost one is the government’s subservient attitude to India and the next one is to allow powerful quarters to grab the rivers’ land. The environment experts also opined that Bangladesh should have ratified the Convention much earlier to be able to take India’s unilateral water withdrawals to the UN. Bangladesh is among the 106 countries that voted for the Convention adopted on May 21, 1997. Through ratifying the UN Convention, Bangladesh can at least raise the point in the international forum and put pressure on India to comply with the Convention’s provisions once it turns into law. India for the sake of her own interest neither voted for the Convention nor ratified the Convention as it prohibits unilateral water withdrawals from common rivers from the upstream.
Bangladesh suffers an estimated annual loss of Tk 135 billion in agricultural productivity alone due to India’s unilateral water withdrawal from 54 common rivers in the upstream. Two-thirds of the country would turn into desert in the next three decades unless India’s unilateral withdrawal of water from the trans-boundary rivers is stopped. Regrettably, India is neither paying any heed to Bangladesh’s concerns when the Awami League government is also not willing to bring pressure on India in public nor willing to take the matter to the international forum. It is mentionable that the Water Resource Minister during BNP’s regime and a caretaker government adviser understood the law’s importance, but none could get the Convention ratified. This is a highly embarrassing situation and also humiliating to the rights of the people of Bangladesh. As some provisions of the Convention, including the “principle of prior notification” and “no-harm principle”, require a nation to inform, and if necessary, refrain from a project if it harms the nations which share the international watercourses, Bangladesh must ratify the Convention.
It is appalling that the World Bank was financing India’s controversial river linking to withdraw the waters of most of the common rivers which would leave disastrous impacts on Bangladesh. Therefore to keep the environmental hazards within boundary, Bangladesh should have grabbed the opportunity to raise the issue globally by signing the UN Convention. We hold the view that Bangladesh should not fail to notice such an opportunity to ratify the Convention to ensure water flow of all trans-boundary rivers from the Indian upstream.
