World Water Day being marked today
Save the Environment Movement holds a roundtable conference in the capital on Monday, marking World Water Day.
Green activists on Monday called upon the authorities concerned to take immediate steps to make the water bodies and the rivers around Dhaka free from encroachments to save the capital city.
They made their calls while addressing a roundtable organised by Poriobesh Bachao Andolon at its office in the city. POBA chairman Abu Naser Khan presided over.
Speakers said that Buriganga, Turag, Balu and Shitalakhya together form a length of about 110 kilometres but the rivers are almost dead because of abrupt encroachments, dumping of thousands of tonnes sewage and waste in to the waters.
The waters get severe pollution as effluents from industries, hospitals and household garbage from Dhaka and adjacent districts are being thrown into the rivers, they said.
Although the volume of water bodies and low lands around Dhaka city were respectively 2,952 hectares and 13,528 hectares in 1960, those came down to 2,104 and 12,718 hectares in 1988 and 1,991 and 6,415 hectares in 2008.
Meanwhile, Bangladesh is going to celebrate the World Water Day today amid wholesale encroachments of rivers in Dhaka and elsewhere in the country.
The government as well as a host of the NGOs would celebrate the day by holding TV talk shows, seminars and rallies.
NGO Forum in a press release said that they were going to organise a national seminar marking the day in the city in collaboration with respective government departments and international organisations.
World Water Day dates back to 1992 UN Conference on environment and development held in Rio, Brazil where it was recommended to designate an international observance for water.
The UN general assembly responded by designating 22 March of 1993 as the first World Water Day.
It has been marked annually since then.
Source: New Age
River flows when there is water to flow. River is the natural path over which water in liquid form flows down. This is absolutely the law of nature and we should all need to understand this natural phenomenon. As we are all more concerned with water during lean period, any loop hole or lack of understanding water resource management and utilization may naturally lead to us face the acute water crisis for that period. As far as Bangladesh is concerned, what we have been thinking and talking is not enough, we need to go beyond to manage efficiently our upland watershed to make sure conservation and utilization of water for that lean period. In this respect,We can’t even ignore the eastern Himalaya, the mother source of water.