ABSTRACT
This article focuses on a major water use in the Ganges Basin, the Ganges Kobadak Irrigation Project in Bangladesh. The objectives of this article are to assess the present and projected irrigation water requirements, the status of the Ganges River and groundwater resources in the project area, and water allocation strategies to fulfil dry-season irrigation requirements in the short, medium and long term while taking into account competing water uses and the Ganges Treaty, an international water-sharing agreement. These objectives are achieved through an assessment of data on the irrigation project, cropping patterns, groundwater levels (1975–2013) and Ganges River flow (1910–2019).
Acknowledgments
This article is based on knowledge the authors gained while working for the Irrigation Management Improvement Project (IMIP, 2015–2020). IMIP is based in Bangladesh and focuses on three irrigation projects: the Teesta, Ganges Kobadak and Muhuri. The project is executed by Mott MacDonald Ltd (UK), in association with Euroconsult Mott MacDonald (Netherlands), Northwest Hydraulic Consultants Ltd (Canada) and SODEV Consultant Int. Ltd (Bangladesh), with the government of Bangladesh and the Bangladesh Water Development Board as the implementing parties. The Asian Development Bank is the contracting authority (Loan No. 3135-BAN). It should be noted that this article has been written independently from IMIP and only reflects the views of the authors, which do not necessarily agree with the views of the government agencies, companies or projects, or the IMIP reports. Two anonymous reviewers, as well as Sam Jewers, Guy Jones and Esther Susuyu Ali, commented on an earlier version of this article. We thank them for their valuable comments, which helped improve the article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Supplementary material
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/07900627.2020.1763265.