30 July - 5 August 2012 - orsam

India, Bangladesh to Meet on Tipaimukh Dam in August
dhaka, Bangladesh — Indian and Bangladeshi experts will meet in late August to assess the impacts
India‘s Tipaimukh multipurpose dam project would have in Bangladesh.
Bangladesh‘s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on July 25 that the Joint Expert Group of Dhaka
and New Delhi would hold its first meeting on August 27-28.
Bangladesh fears that the Surma, Kushiara and other rivers in the country‘s Sylhet region will dry up
if the controversial project is built on the Barak River.
The dam will create a reservoir that covers 22,000 hectares of land; the reservoir, with a capacity of 9
billion meters of water, will be filled when the river floods.
The project would also have the capacity to produce 1,500 megawatts of electricity, but power
generation would fluctuate depending on availability of water.
Bangladeshi scientists say the dam will damage the ecosystem of the surrounding area. Many rivers
in Bangladesh have already dried up due to unilateral water withdrawal by upper riparian India, they
say.
Most of the rivers that flow through Bangladesh originate in the Himalayan mountains, although
some flow down from China.
India has offered Bangladesh the opportunity to participate in the dam project by investing in it and
purchasing the electricity from it; these options are not popular among the Bangladeshi public.
Meanwhile, two Bangladeshi environmental groups -- the Bangladesh Paribesh Andolon, and
Bangladesh Environment Network -- announced earlier this month that they would co-host a
conference in January 2013 aimed at promoting greater understanding among different countries on
basin-wide multilateral management of water resources.
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