IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature

India and Bangladesh face many common challenges. Even as their overlapping geographies force them to share a climate, with its associated vulnerabilities, their use of common resources like water means that actions in one country can profoundly impact the other. As the impacts of climate
change begin to set in, the commonalities in the former will lend greater urgency to the relationship in the latter.

Bangladesh and India share three major river systems: the Ganga, the Brahmaputra and the Meghna. Along with their tributaries, these rivers drain about 1.75 million sq km of land, with an average runoff of 1,200 cu km. The GBM system also supports over 620 million people. Thus, the need for cooperation on trans-boundary waters is crucial to the future well-being of these millions.

This paper essentially designs a research agenda on environmental security issues concerned with India with respect to its trans-boundary water relations with Bangladesh at the critical interface of ecosystem services-wellbeing linkages.

Bangladesh and India share three major river systems: the Ganga, the Brahmaputra and the Meghna. Along with their tributaries, these rivers drain about 1.75 million sq km of land, with an average runoff of 1,200 cu km. The GBM system also supports over 620 million people. Thus, the need for cooperation on trans-boundary waters is crucial to the future well-being of these millions.

The year 2011 was a crucial one for Ecosystems for Life: A Bangladesh-India Initiative. While in 2010 the activities were more concentrated on setting up the project and establishing the direction and course for the coming years, activities in 2011 focused on broadening and reinforcing the outreach of the project; scaling up dialogues and research; and strengthening the knowledge base. In the first two years, the major areas of interventions of Ecosystems for Life have been initiating and continuously updating stakeholder identification and mapping in relevant fields and sectors; engagement and consultations with stakeholders at different levels through various dialogues and meetings at the national and regional level; and generation of knowledge from facilitated discussions, situation analyses and joint research on the thematic areas of the project.