Sub-title:
VOLUME 1: RISKS AND OPPORTUNITIES FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF PEOPLE LIVING AND WORKING IN THE BASIN
ဖော်ပြချက်/အကြောင်းအရာ:
"The Ayeyarwady is at the heart of many activities in Myanmar. In each of its sub basins, a unique set of
needs and risks is associated with the river. As part of the WWF-funded Ayeyarwady River in the Economy
Project, a series of workshops were held in each of these sub basins (upper, Chindwin, middle, lower and
delta) to identify the goods and services provided by the river, but also to identify how these demands are
putting the river at risk, and ultimately the sectors themselves, which depend on a healthy Ayeyarwady.
30 participants attended each workshop. They represented a diversity of backgrounds; academia,
government, private sector and civil society. They identified the goods and services provided to their
sub basins that depend on their stretch of river. These include provisioning services such as water for
irrIgation, regulating services such as flood recession ponds for fish spawning, supporting services such as
safe habitats for biodiversity, and cultural services for tourism, as well as spiritual sites along the basin.
They were also asked to identify how these sectors providing goods and services are impacting upon the
river system, creating risks for the stretch of river in their region.
The top risks identified in each sub-basin are shown in the following figure. These include flooding,
mining, bank erosion, pollution, sedimentation, navigation challenges, river morphology changes, and fish
species degradation.
In addition to the individual risks identified within each localized sub-basin, there are also interlinked
risks from up to downstream.
For instance, increased mining or deforestation in the upper catchment may shift the sediment dynamics
downstream, causing bank erosion or sedimentation. As the Ayeyarwady flows through the country,
hydropower dams trap sediment and may reduce the valuable ecosystem services provided to flood
recession agriculture in its lower stretches. Because of this sedimentation the river widens and becomes
more shallow, causing significant challenges for boats navigating the waters. The use of pesticides and
fertilizers upstream also causes pollution for those using the river downstream. These are just a few of the
ways that risks are transported geographically throughout the entire river basin.
It is of paramount importance that economic development plans taking place, especially
in the upper reaches of the Ayeyarwady and its tributaries, take into account their impacts on the users
downstream. This includes not only water availability and quality, but also the timing of flows and
sediment dynamics. For instance, the flooding risks identified by stakeholders in the lower basin may
be due to a sediment deficit in the upper reaches. This in turn limits the flow of sediment to the delta,
contributing to its sinking. The lack of sediment may be due to a number of factors including regulation
of flows from dams, the trapping of actual sediment from dams or perhaps the extraction of sediment
for the construction sector. Individually these impacts may be small, but cumulatively they may result in
a vulnerable delta, the home of the majority of Myanmar’s population, infrastructure, and fish and rice
production..."
ရင်းမြစ်:
World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)
Date of Publication:
2018-05-11
Date of entry:
2019-07-22
Grouping:
- Individual Documents
အကြောင်းအရာ/အမျိုးအစား:
Countries:
Myanmar
Language:
English
မှတ်တမ်း:
ပုံစံ:
pdf
အရွယ်အစား:
1.97 MB
Resource Type:
text
Text quality:
- Good