Water Management Issues of Coastal Bangladesh

Abstract

Water is an essential resource for life and livelihood for human beings whose allocation, allotment, and management stay behind the great anxiety being improvement reflection and practices for quite a long time. Bangladesh, a water-copious nation with low per capital water availability, is now a highly exposed country because of climate change and salinity intrusion, becoming the primary concern for freshwater scarcity in the coastal area. Water salinity is rising significantly because of the intrusion of salinity from the sea, declination of upstream water flow because of the flawed system of polders and embankments, coastal aquaculture and salt farming with the salty water, and increasing level of sea because of melting of polar ice caps, depletion of groundwater and frequent natural disasters. This chapter focuses on water management–related policies and strategies of Bangladesh, including administrative bodies for water management in coastal areas. Besides, the authors focus on the water-related crisis for coastal communities and the resilience capabilities of coastal communities in response to salinity intrusion in the country’s cropland and groundwater level. The authors suggested that integrated coordination is urgently necessary between individual, coastal community, and institutional levels to solve the drinking water crisis, and a community-focused approach of water management could be the principal accessible position for building inroads in the direction of transforming the practicing of climate-resilient agricultural production technologies in the coastal areas of Bangladesh.