State Minister for Foreign Affairs Shama Obaed Islam on Thursday said the issue related to the renewal of the Bangladesh-India Ganges Water Treaty is moving in a positive direction.
"I think it is moving in a positive direction. I hope India will understand its importance and come forward accordingly," she told reporters when her attention was drawn to the renewal of the treaty.
The Bangladesh-India Ganges Water Treaty, which is expiring in December this year, needs to be "reviewed and reformed comprehensively" before going for a renewed treaty by engaging economists, urban planners, sociologists, and environmentalists in the planning, as Dhaka shares the "risk" of not sharing it appropriately, experts said.
Officials said Bangladesh's agriculture and food availability will be badly affected, while climate vulnerability will increase substantially if the treaty is allowed to expire with no new sharing agreement in place.
The Ganges Water Treaty was signed on December 12, 1996, for a period of 30 years, which makes this the last year covered by it.
Bangladesh and India share 54 rivers including the Ganges.
To discuss all relevant issues that form part of this cooperation, the two countries have a bilateral mechanism in place, the Joint Rivers Commission.
Given the willingness and interest of both sides to reset the relationship, an arrangement for sharing the Ganges waters in an "equitable and climate-proof manner" will be one of the first tests of the reset.
Former Bangladesh High Commissioner to India Tariq A. Karim said the 1996 Ganges Water Sharing Treaty between Bangladesh and India showed that cooperation is possible even on sensitive issues.
"But the treaty is due to expire in December 2026, and its renewal will test whether the region can adapt old agreements to new hydrological and climatic realities," he said while speaking at a seminar recently.
The former diplomat, who also served as Bangladesh Ambassador to the USA, said, "Across the wider region, water, food, energy, health, disaster management, and climate resilience are regional public goods. No country can secure them alone."
The former diplomat said the compulsions of ecological integrity may therefore be South Asia's strongest argument for renewed cooperation.
He said the region should consider shared river-basin management, early-warning systems, climate adaptation financing, joint research, and a regional ecological security dialogue.
"Such cooperation would not require states to surrender sovereignty. It would require them to recognise that sovereignty in an age of climate stress is strengthened - not weakened - by cooperation achieved through its pooling," said the foreign affairs expert.
"MoFA (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) has to do a lot of homework, and data sharing is key. We need to keep in mind that the situation in 1996 and 2026 is not the same. This can't be seen only from engineering or diplomatic prisms; they should include economists, urban planners, and sociologists in the planning," international affairs expert Prof. Shahab Enam Khan told UNB recently.