South Asia’s largest rivers threatened, warns UN

Water resources in three of South Asia’s largest river basins are highly vulnerable, with millions of people at risk of increasing water scarcity, a new report has found.

The report — jointly released by the UN Environment Programme and the Asian Institute of Technology — studied the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna (GBM), Indus and Helmand river basins, all of which span multiple countries within the region.
It lists overexploitation, climate change, and inadequate distribution and use of water resources among the key threats to the three basins, calling for “a unique mix of policy interventions and preferred routes for future water resources development” to tackle these challenges.

Jinhua Zhang, regional coordinator at the UNEP Division of Early Warning & Assessment told SciDev.Net that countries should cooperate more to improve how water resources are managed — particularly to control pollution and improve efficiency — to help stop further damage to these rivers.

SciDev