Water everywhere but drought and arsenic plague Bangladesh

Bangladesh: Farmer Badiuddin Ahmed points to the outline of the long dried-up river that once irrigated his land.

"We used to swim and have boat races in this river," he says. "It gave us fish to eat. Our lands were fertile. But now it is as dry and dusty as the land."

Water the lifeblood of Bangladesh's agriculture-based economy is everywhere in the South Asian nation.

Formed from the deltaic plain at the confluence of three major rivers, the country is also criss-crossed by hundreds more.

During the monsoon, anything from 20 to 65 percent of the impoverished country floods.

And yet, during the dry season farmers in the northwest say severe shortages have forced them to abandon their lands. In the south, millions of villagers live with the constant threat of ill-health from arsenic-contaminated drinking water. "We cannot produce crops in the dry season because of drought and in the rainy season there are floods submerging the fields," says Ahmed."When we need water we do not get a single drop, and when we do not need water we get a deluge," he adds.

Although the government says 95 percent of people have access to clean drinking water, the statistic does not take into account arsenic contamination caused by shallow tube wells drilled in the 1970s and 1980s. The pipes, ironically installed by development agencies to tackle the threat of disease from dirty surface water, are poisoned because they draw their water from shallow arsenic-rich sediments.

A range of projects have been undertaken to try to tackle the problem but the water supplies of an estimated 50 million people remain affected.

The World Health Organisation has said the contamination has caused at least 100,000 cases of skin lesions and the country is also bracing for outbreaks of cancer over the next decade. While a broad consensus exists on the cause of Bangladesh's arsenic poisoning, experts are divided on the reasons behind the scarcity of water for agriculture.

Bangladesh blames Indian dams and barrages which withdraw water from shared rivers for irrigation projects.

India, meanwhile, says the root of the problem is Bangladesh's lack of water management. "Bangladesh has abundant water resources but it needs to harness those resources in a better, more efficient way rather than constantly blaming India," argues Ajit Gupta, a spokesman for the Indian High Commission in Dhaka.

Water has been a key issue between India and Bangladesh for many years.

In 1996 the two countries finally signed a 30-year a treaty aimed at regulating the downstream flow into Bangladesh from the Ganges river, known here as the Padma.

But no agreements have ever been reached on dozens of other shared rivers.The Bangladesh government estimates that the reduction of water from the Ganges alone has resulted in direct losses to agriculture and other sectors including fisheries of about three billion dollars

Hydrologist Ainun Nishat says Indian dams have boosted Indian farm output at the expense of Bangladeshi agricultural production.

"The situation has become so bad in the northern and western parts of the country that there is hardly any water in the rivers during the dry season; the whole region looks like a big desert," he says.

Bangladeshi experts say that in addition to irrigation problems the lack of water also causes an imbalance between sea and river levels. This causes sea water to encroach and results in high salinity, leaving land unfit for cultivation.

As a result many farmers say it is now impossible to grow anything on their land and have resorted to working as labourers to make ends meet.Sajjadur Rashid, a Dhaka University professor of geography, believes the only way to resolve the issue is for Bangladesh to reach a water-sharing agreement with India covering all the main common rivers. Nilphamari, Monday AFP