Shafiqul Islam - Water Diplomacy in Action: Contingent Approaches to Managing Complex Water Problems

Anthem Press

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This edition first published in UK and USA 2017

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2017 Shafiqul Islam and Kaveh Madani editorial matter and selection; individual chapters individual contributors

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Islam, Shafiqul, 1960 editor. | Madani, Kaveh, editor.Title: Water diplomacy in action : contingent approaches to managing complexwater problems / editors, Shafiqul Islam and Kaveh Madani.Description: London, UK; New York, NY: Anthem Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.Identifiers: LCCN 2016052841 | ISBN 9781783084906 (hardback : alk. paper)Subjects: LCSH: Water-supplyInternational cooperation. |Water-supplyPolitical aspects. | Water-supplyGovernment policy. |Water-supplyManagement. | Water resources development.Classification: LCC TD345 .W26155 2017 | DDC 333.91dc23LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016052841

ISBN-13: 978-1-78308-490-6 (Hbk)

ISBN-10: 1-78308-490-1 (Hbk)

ISBN-13: 978-1-78308-493-7 (Pbk)

ISBN-10: 1-78308-493-6 (Pbk)

Cover credits:
Sprout in dried cracked earth
Andrey Emelyanenko / Shutterstock.com, used under license from Shutterstock.com

Sugar beet on agricultural field on beautiful summer day
prudkov / Shutterstock.com, used under license from Shutterstock.com

Barcelona, May 30: Aerial view of a massive crowd at Primavera Sound 2014
Festival (PS14) on May 30, 2014 in Barcelona, Spain
Christian Bertrand / Shutterstock.com, used under license from Shutterstock.com

This title is also available as an e-book.

In the early 1970s, the leading cause of childhood mortality in Bangladesh).

The underdeveloped immune systems of children below five years make them particularly susceptible to death from diarrheal disease. To address this issue, the United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF) initiated a project in 1972 to build shallow tube wells that tapped into local groundwater aquifers (Smith, Lingas and Rahman ). Such tube wells are not as vulnerable to contamination as are surface water sources, which made them a seemingly ideal solution for the problem at hand.

By 1980, one million tube wells had been installeda number that then grew tenfold in the decade that followed, bringing coverage to nearly the entirety of the Bangladeshi population in the process (Jones et al. ). In fact, they became so intertwined with Bangladeshi cultural practices that many families even began to include them in their daughters dowries. At the time, UNICEF did not know that the same wells that prevented diarrheal disease so effectively in these rural Bangladeshi communities were also the cause of arsenic poisoning.

Shallow tube wells, which draw water from within a depth of 150 meters from the surface, are prone to arsenic contamination from metal deposits in the surrounding soils (Smith, Lingas and Rahman ).

Red Well, Green Well

In 1999, UNICEF initiated a multimillion dollar campaign to screen wells for arsenic and educate communities about the dangers of consuming arsenic-contaminated water (Chappell, Abernathy and Calderon ). Suddenly, one in five families no longer had a safe and reliable source of water at their disposal.

But limited access to clean water was not the only consequence that emerged from the 1999 UNICEF campaign. With the red-rimmed tube wells came tremendous stigmatization, and to this day, individuals with arsenicosis face discrimination both financially and socially (Ahmad et al. ).

Rural Bangladeshi womenwho largely rely on their husbands and fathers for monetary supportsuffer disproportionately (Sultana ). The same wells that had once made it easier for women to wed now leave them with diminished prospects for marriage because of suspected arsenicosis.

The Blind Men and the Elephant