Sustainable River Management in Bangladesh through Capital Dredging: Mitigation of Environmental Impacts through Project Management & Operational Best Practices

Author: Mohammad Obaidullah Ibne Bashir
DOI: doi.org/10.70279/bmj-v6-i1-1065
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Well-structured project management, careful and timely monitoring and operational best practices in the dredging projects in different rivers facilitate the local public authorities to mitigate the environmental impacts in Bangladesh. Determining correctly the key factors that affect the environment helps design pragmatic and operational roadmap for maintenance and capital dredging projects. Additionally, the study must consider the difficulties inherent in dredging jobs, the techno-economic mega plan incorporated into Bangladesh Delta Plan 2100, existing river management practices, government policies and regulations, prior to attempting to reflect on what is most needed among stakeholders for the successful implementation of improvement measures. The study maintains that adequate environment concerns should not be integrated later while reflecting upon management, monitoring and operation, but during the project design stage of capital dredging. The study focuses on evaluating the present extent of awareness and practices of environmental mitigation measures regarding the handling of the dredged materials, operational energy efficiencies, stakeholders influence or perception on the implementation of environmental mitigation measures and barriers of application of best practices. Then it tries to determine strategies for developing a sustainable operational framework to mitigate these identified barriers. Finally, it proposes a framework for the mitigation of environmental challenges resulting from dredging jobs. Besides, this study identifies some potential government policy gap which needs to be shrunk tightly for effective implementation of mitigation measures for sustainable dredging.