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35 years of cooperation between the Netherlands and Bangladesh
THE cooperation between the Netherlands and Bangladesh dates back to 1973. The Netherlands programme
in Bangladesh Is fully aligned with the National Strategy to Accelerate Poverty Reduction. In supporting this strategy, the Netherlands
contributes towards improving access to basic education, to improving health and drinking water and sanitation, better management of available natural water resources as well as to private sector development, good governance and gender equality.
In this Special Supplement we are highlighting our involvement in the water sector.
Water is crucial for Bangladesh. It determines agriculture, health, safety, economic activities, and culture. Bangladesh is both blessed as well as cursed by water. The mighty rivers feed agricultural lands during the rainy season, but too much water causes floods and destruction. And too little rain means no crops, and then hunger. The devastating floods and famine which ravaged Bangladesh in 1974 changed the history of water management in the country: drastic improvements had to be made in order to prevent such catastrophes from happening again.
The Netherlands and Bangladesh have been fighting together in the water sector since 1975. We do this because our two countries have similar problems, and can learn from each other's solutions. In the early years the cooperation focused on building infrastructure like embankments, bridges, polders, dredging rivers etc. This was needed to reduce flooding risks and enhance agriculture. The struggle proved highly successful and Bangladesh became self-sufficient in food production. However, since the early 90's it was realised that the thousands of kilometres of embankments and all the equipment could not be operated and maintained effectively by the government alone. The people's help was needed. By 2000 this led to a special government regulation making participatory water management the new way to go. Also it was realised that effective water management can only be realised if there are strong government institutions to design and Implement policies,
Today, the Bnngla-Dutch development cooperation programme for water resources management has three plllnrs:
I. capacity building of the Bangladeshi authorities (BWDB, WARPO, Ministry of Water Resources) for their new tasks In participatory water management;
1 Improvement of the lives of people In coastal zones by protect Ing newly created land through embankments and social an physic cal infrastructure,
.1 better management of rivers, Including! unibating i Iver erosion
Besides these, we fund activities on tfamboundary fiver manage went and drinking water and sanitation,
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