While flash floods in late April in the haor areas of the greater Sylhet and Mymensingh regions are more or less expected, we’re increasingly witnessing a change with such floods coming early and damaging semi-ripe crops before harvest, causing farmers financial losses in huge amounts. We are now seeing flash floods in late March and early April, as it happened just a few days ago, in the districts of Netrakona, Kishoreganj and Sunamganj. The devastating effects of flash floods in 2017—which damaged crops, fish and poultry worth Tk 13,000 crore—and 2019 also come to mind. This early-season occurrence destroys not just crops worth thousands of crores of taka, but also marine life, poultry and livestock. It’s worth mentioning that farmers in this region grow Boro paddy on around 400,000 hectares of land, producing Tk 7,500 crore worth of paddy every year.
Given the regularity with which pre-season flash floods have been occurring over the last five or six years, we may be facing a new normal, which merits a long-term solution rather than quick fixes. According to experts, the fact that the timespan for floods is advancing into the harvesting season has much to do with the global climate crisis. Thus, merely constructing levees to protect haor areas, as we traditionally do, is no longer going to be enough. It’s an uneconomical and recurring expenditure, whose return is disproportionate to the cost, especially in the face of flash floods becoming more erratic and frequent. Reportedly, all three major levees in this region gave away in the face of floods, while most others are at risk of collapsing.
What’s needed is a shift away from total dependence on levees to long-term solutions like river-dredging. We understand that the water resources ministry is planning to start dredging 14 rivers in the Sylhet region. But instead of dredging a few rivers at random, we need a massive dredging plan backed by a thorough study of the river and canal system in the region, backed by the collective wisdom of water experts and engineers.
It will also be worth the money to investigate the underlying causes of the flash floods before permanent solutions are formulated, since there’s more than one reason why flash floods occur and why the run-off of the precipitation is impeded. It’s also necessary for collaboration with India, since it’s the precipitation in Meghalaya that causes the surge downstream in the Sylhet region. Without a permanent solution, our losses will continue to be recurrent.
মার্কিন নিষেধাজ্ঞার প্রায় ৪ মাস পর কুমিল্লায় মাদক চোরাকারবারীদের গুলিতে নিহত মহিউদ্দিন সরকার হত্যা মামলার প্রধান আসামি রাজু র্যাবের সঙ্গে ‘বন্দুকযুদ্ধে’ নিহত হয়েছেন।
