Posted on September 8, 2025
The billion-dollar Teesta mega project is set to unleash a multifaceted disaster while offering a group of people the opportunity to make endless profits, warned water and environment experts and activists.
Barely anything is officially known about the project, which is likely to be implemented soon, potentially harming people, the environment, the economy, and Bangladesh’s diplomatic relations.
Scraping information from promotional materials, feasibility studies, and news reports, the experts analysed potential aspects of the project, revealing it was neither technically sound nor scientifically okay nor environmentally justifiable.
Crises that warranted the project in the first place, such as flash floods, riverbank erosion, and lean-season water shortage, will worsen, the experts feared.
“The project will present Bangladesh with needs such as relentless dredging of the Teesta River and constant repairing and maintenance of its banks,” said Md Khalequzzaman, who teaches geology at the Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania.
“It will benefit a group of people such as contractors, managers, politicians and the Chinese government,” he added.
With a substantial loan and technical assistance from the state-owned Chinese company Power China, the project named Teesta River Comprehensive Management and Restoration Project aims to change the nature of the river from braided to meandering by building 114km of embankments and reducing its width to a maximum of 1 km. The current average width of the river is 3km. The project also promises to reclaim 170 square km of land, control flood and riverbank erosion, and increase navigation and irrigation.
The project wishes to confine the wandering river into a trained main channel with a scour canal nestled in it. The river’s banks will be embanked for more than 100 km.
The experts argued that no amount of digging in Bangladesh could address the main problem with the Teesta: water shortage during the lean season.
Rising in the eastern Himalayas, about 2,000 sq km of the watershed of the Teesta, representing 17 per cent of the whole watershed, belongs to Bangladesh. Obstructions, a barrage and water withdrawal in the upstream Indian states of Sikkim and West Bengal reduced the flow and sediment deposition in the Teesta from 60 bcm and 49 mt to 25 bcm and 3mt over the past decades, respectively. India obstructed the Teesta unilaterally, diverting almost all water during the lean season and dumping excessive water on Bangladesh during the monsoon. In 2006, Bangladesh received 700 cusec during the lean season, which dropped the 1990-96 level of 10,000 cusec. In 2016, the flow in the river during the dry season dropped to over 300 cusec.
The water that might become available in the proposed main channel of the river after deepening the riverbed is nothing but the shallow groundwater, said Khaleq in an analysis. He shared the analysis with UNB.
Such dredging will allow storing additional water during the lean season if a dam or barrage is built downstream. But there is no such plan in the project. Building of such a dam or barrage, however, will have other challenges, such as trapping sediments and filling up the river quickly.
“Intervening with natural river flow will bear many environmental consequences,” said professor AKM Saiful Islam of the Institute of Water and Flood Management at BUET.
“Wrapping the river’s bank with concrete will hamper groundwater recharge and draining of water from the floodplain,” he said, adding that the entire ecology will be affected. Experts consulted for the report unanimously agreed that the mega project would provide legitimacy to India’s unfair and unilateral control of the Teesta water by trying to solve a transboundary water dispute without getting most of the natural water flow from the upstream.
“Teesta is not a mere conduit of water transport. High precipitation together with huge sediments from geologically active mountains gives rise to braided rivers such as the Teesta,” Khaleq wrote in his analysis.
Teesta historically carries more sediment than any other similar river in Bangladesh. The underlying geological forces will gradually convert the Teesta back into a braided river by riverbank erosion and sediment deposition, the analysis said, noting that the Teesta watershed generates the highest amount of sediments per unit area – 3,200 tons per sq km per year. Since the Teesta River carries unusually high volumes of sediments for its size, it is likely that the narrowed channel will be overwhelmed by sediment volume, eventually leading to sandbars, reducing the river’s water-carrying capacity and frequent flash flooding, Khaleq said.
The trained river will have to be continuously dredged to keep it navigable, the analysis said. The Teesta River carries about 49 million tons of sediment each year, Khaleq analysed, if all sediments were to be deposited in the riverbed, then it would take only 7 years to fill up the dredged channel.
“It can be concluded that narrowing the river from an average width of 3 km to 700 m will result in higher flow velocity, increased riverbank erosion, and higher flooding intensity due to water congestion upstream of these bridges,” said the analysis.
“If the width of the river is reduced to 700 m for the entire length of the river upstream of Kaunia Bridge, then the riverbanks on both sides will experience increased flow velocity and riverbank erosion,” the analysis added.
The project will leave the cross-sectional area of the Teesta at 25 per cent and 38 per cent of the original river.
In the event of a 50-year flood, which carries 10,680 cubic meters per second, the narrow and shallow channel will be filled to the brim in less than five hours, said the analysis. Floods generally last for more than one day in a large watershed such as the Teesta.
The dredged channel will be overwhelmed after a few hours of a 1968-type flood, and the river will likely spread over the floodplain in the reclaimed area. In other words, the dredged canal will not be able to accommodate floodwater for even one day during a large flood of 1968 magnitude or a 50-year type flood, the analysis said.
If the river width is constricted from 5 km to 1 km or less, the analysis said, the riverbank will have a much steeper slope, likely to be in the order of 60 degrees. In addition, the scour channels within the main channel will have vertical walls-90-degree slopes. Over time, the riverbank materials will adjust to their natural slope of 25 to 30 degrees and, in doing so, the riverbank will undergo erosion and widening to reach the natural angle of repose.
The water law stipulates consultation with the Teesta dwellers, water resource specialists, sociologists and civil society members before approving such a project, said water expert Ainun Nishat.
“But we have no idea what is in the project or in the government’s mind,” he said.
The project should be halted, said Sharif Jamil, the head of Waterkeepers Bangladesh, unless it is proved essential to protect people’s interests and the environment.
“The project involves a geopolitically sensitive location that for long attracted the interests of Asia’s archrivals-India and China,” he said.
Neither the water resources and environment, forest, and climate adviser Syeda Rizwana Hasan nor the water resources secretary Mokabbir Hossain responded to calls made or messages sent over the phone for a comment on the matter.
