## 6 Water Sharing
India commenced a test run of the feeder canal of the Farakka Barrage on 21 April 1975 that continued up to 31 May 1975 following a decision between the Indian Minister of Agriculture and Irrigation and the Bangladesh Minister for Flood Control, Water Resources, and Power who met in Dhaka from 16 to 18 April 1975. The test run was carried out with varying flows of 11,000 cuses to 16,000 cuses. However, after the brutal killing of the then President of Bangladesh Sheikh [PERSON], India started unilaterally diverting the water of the Ganges at the full capacity of the feeder canal (40,000 cuses), causing devastating impacts in the southwestern region of Bangladesh, including the Sundarbans. Hence, in 1976 the issue was raised in the UN General assembly. Therefore, without any treaty/agreement with Bangladesh, India began to build several barages/regulators across many trans-boundary rivers, such as the Teesta, Gumti, Khowai, Monu, and Muhuri. Trans-boundary freshwater resource disputes among the user countries are mostly being discussed as a socio-political issue, which often overlooks the ecological and environmental issues [76, 93]. Consequently, Bangladesh has been experiencing severe ecological damages in the wetland ecosystems. The wetland ecosystem of Bangladesh depends on about 1200 billion m\({}^{3}\) of river discharges from the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, and the Meghna River systems, and about one-third of the ecosystem is noruished by the Ganges River ecosystem. The Ganges River is very rich in biodiversity and acts as a natural breeding and raising ground for many freshwater fish species. However, the Ganges basin ecosystem in Bangladesh is experiencing ecocide due to the changes in its regular seasonal water flow by the Farakka Barrage. The ecosystem has lost its regular flow pattern and navigation routes. Therefore, the diversity and distributional patterns of more than 100 species of Gangetic fish and plankton have changed [66, 94]. Moreover, different aspects of water diversion at the upstream rivers significantly reduced the reduction of the freshwater supply in downstream Bangladesh, which ultimately increased the river salinity in southwestern coastal Bangladesh. Increased salinity has a significant implication for the reduction of agricultural production, the fish population and diversity, and the regeneration and survival of major mangrove plants (e.g., Heritiera fomes) in the coastal region of Bangladesh [95; 96]. The floral composition of the largest mangrove forest, Sundarbans, has also been significantly reduced, which ultimately threatens economic livelihoods [66; 89]. The Ganges-Kobadak (GK) Irrigation Project, which was started in the 1960s remarkably improved the economic solvency and quality of life of the people of southwest Bangladesh. However, the operation of the Farakka Dam caused a drastic fall in surface and groundwater availability in this region [97]. Hence, the halt of the irrigation project in 1994 badly affected 350,000 acres of agricultural lands, which had a negative impact on the food security and livelihood opportunities of 10 million subsistence farmers, particularly in the dry season [98; 99]. Furthermore, irregular rainfall patterns with increased numbers of warmer summer days and colder winter days have turned the climate extreme. Increased coastal erosion, widespread inland salinity, and water quality deterioration may be the additional effects of the water diversion of the Ganges River [87; 100; 101; 102]. The impacts of the Farakka barrage on Bangladesh are illustrated in Figure 3.  
It is worth mentioning that Bangladesh and India started discussing the sharing of transboundary rivers considering not only the two countries but also sharing the river and ecological requirements after the signing of the Ganges Water Treaty in 1996.