Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Monday sought support from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to implement the Delta Plan-2100, saying, "It is very important for Bangladesh." The premier made the request when Vice President of ADB (Operations-1) Shixin Chen paid a courtesy call on her at her official Ganabhaban residence in the capital.
In 2018, the government launched the Delta Plan 2100 to secure the future use of the country's water resources and mitigate the impact of climate change and natural calamities. As Bangladesh is vulnerable to these challenges as well as climate change impacts, sustainable developments require the caliber to cope with climatic variables. Such challenges indeed require the proper implementation of the government’s visionary “Bangladesh Delta Plan 2100”.
Proper implementation of the
project will be the key to tackle
climate change challenges
BDP 2100 is the combination of long-term strategies and subsequent interventions for ensuring long term water and food security, economic growth and environmental sustainability while effectively reducing vulnerability to natural disasters and building resilience to climate change and other delta challenges through robust, adaptive and integrated strategies, and equitable water governance. It is apprehended that ‘BDP 2100’ will enable the country to deal with climate change in a more efficient and strategic way. Most importantly, ‘BDP 2100’ will help the country reclaim a big mass of land from the Bay of Bengal. Hence, it can be hoped that the proper implementation of the project will be the key to tackle climate change challenges.
For many years, Bangladesh has been facing a number of delta related challenges in the form of frequent natural hazards, salinity intrusion, sea level rise, and so on. It is also to note that Bangladesh as a delta country has had some privileges nonetheless. In order to explore and tap the full potential of a delta country, making a strategic delta management plan was more than a necessity.
After implementing its own delta management plan, Netherlands, reclaimed 6,000 square kilometres of land and the country is now assisting Bangladesh in executing the plan. However, following Netherlands, Bangladesh should also try to reclaim a big mass of land from the Bay of Bengal through implementing ‘BDP 2100’.
Every year rivers from Himalayas bring tonnes of sediments while crossing Bangladesh, which earlier gave birth to some 1,000 square kilometres of land. Experts assert that through this process in the next 50 years Bangladesh can reclaim at least 1,000 square kilometres naturally.
However, it is said that with the use of new technology, Bangladesh could speed up the accretion process as Netherlands did. In this regard, building more dams using advanced technology is very much needed which would enable Bangladesh to reclaim 4,000 to 5,000 square kilometres in the near future.