Seminar Series: Abstract

12.30
July 07 2009
Seminar Room B (Arndt Room)

Student Seminar - Participatory water resource management for socio-economic development in Bangladesh
Zillur Rahman

This research addresses the question of sustainability of water resource management in Bangladesh in view of changing climate conditions and complex social factors like social networking. Bangladesh is a highly populated country located on the floodplains of the Padma (Ganges) and Brahmaputra rivers, receiving abundant monsoonal rains from June to September. Rapid population growth, changing farming practices and weak governance of water resources have increased the gap between demand and supply of water in recent years that have led to a water crisis that threatens the socio-economic development of the country. It is increasingly acknowledged that climate change poses a serious challenge for future water resource management in Bangladesh and it has the potential to exacerbate existing environmental problems. Such problems include large-scale sedimentation, changing water quality, saline intrusion in coastal areas, land-use conversion, and degradation of water ecosystems.

Although predictions of water resource availability and climate change impacts has improved significantly with current advances in modelling techniques, so far little has been done to link climate change to rural social factors considered crucial in determining water resource management practices in Bangladesh. My research will address this apparent gap by exploring; what parts of social networks are important, why they are important and how such networks influence the development of sustainable water resource management in Bangladesh. More specifically, my doctoral thesis will investigate the system’s relationships by using Bayesian Network models under changing and non-changing climatic conditions and determine the challenges and opportunities of social networks for rural water resource management in Bangladesh.