Water Learning Week: Three senior state officials head to Netherlands to attend event

Kolkata: Three senior state government officials are scheduled to leave for the Netherlands hours on Sunday to attend Asia Netherlands Water Learning Week (April 15-19) for the exchange of ideas on nature-based solutions applicable to river basins. There will be workshops, lectures and field visits where the three officials will get an idea of the expertise of the Dutch in river management.

“The officials will be visiting various embankments constructed by the Netherlands government to prevent erosion. They will behold how they construct the embankments and learn about the design of the same and later examine its feasibility for Sunderbans area,” an official of the state Irrigation and Waterways department said.

Joint Secretary Biplab Mukherjee, Director of River Research Institute Bibhas Barman and Finance department, Special Secretary Pawan Kadiyan will also interact with professors of Deltares-the leading institute in water management in the world.

On April 1, Netherland Ambassador to India Marisa Gerards visited Sunderbans and saw several embankment sites and took stock of erosion.

A follow-up meeting was chaired at Nabanna in the presence of Amit Mitra, Advisor to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Finance on April 4 where collaboration between the two governments in water management, milk production etc was discussed in length. The visit of three officials from the state was decided at the meeting.

The Netherlands is assisting Bengal government in understanding the river basin system of two rivers —Dasha and Matla — so that effective measures can be taken to curb the problems plaguing these two rivers.

The Dasha River is posing erosional hazards while Matla which is a very wide river is badly affected by siltation issues.

A Letter of Intent (LOI) with the Netherland government was signed by the Irrigation department in the sixth edition of the two-day Bengal Global Business Summit held in April 2022 for technical co-operation in the field of integrated delta management and development of the Indian Sunderbans.