DHAKA — As Bangladesh celebrated its 55th Independence Day on March 26, the country's water security crisis has emerged as a defining challenge for the nation of 170 million people, with experts calling for a fundamental renegotiation of the 1996 Ganges Water Treaty with India.
The 1996 treaty was designed to share river water during dry seasons, but climate change has rendered its assumptions obsolete, according to Dr. Ahad Chowdhury, whose analysis published in The Daily Star argues that Bangladesh should declare the agreement invalid before negotiations begin.
"Around 74 percent of Ganga basin stations decline 17 percent per decade—climate models underestimated severity," Chowdhury wrote. Each year means worse droughts, more catastrophic floods, more trapped sediment, and more subsidence.
A billion people aren't a statistic—they're a billion stories. For farmers in Rajshahi's Matikata Union, the numbers tell a devastating tale. The Padma River once reached 100 feet deep during peak seasons and 60 feet during lean periods. By 2015, those figures had collapsed to 15 feet at peak and zero during dry seasons.
Between 1997 and 2016, Bangladesh received less than its treaty allocation in 94 of 300 cases. During critical dry spells, the country failed to receive stipulated supplies 39 times out of 60 instances—a systematic failure that has left 79 of Bangladesh's rivers "dead or dying."
The crisis extends beyond politics into existential threat. Himalayan glaciers are projected to decline 40 percent by 2100, while the Ganges basin experiences its worst droughts in 1,300 years. Without adequate sediment flow, Bangladesh's delta subsides at 5-7 millimeters yearly. Saltwater has advanced 15-20 kilometers inland—a 64 percent increase since 1973.
Sunita Devi, a farmer in Chapai Nawabganj, told reporters that her family now relies entirely on groundwater pumping. "During my mother's time, we could drink from the river. Now even the wells are running dry," she said. Bangladesh extracts approximately 32 cubic kilometers of groundwater annually, with aquifer levels falling 15-20 millimeters yearly.
