Harmonizing Natural and Built Environments: Integrating Wetlands in Land-Use Planning for Sustainable Development – A Case Study of Ananya R/A, Chittagong

3.1 WETLAND OF BANGLADESH

Geographically Bangladesh is lying between 200 34' and 260 38' N latitude and 880 51' and 920 41' E longitude. It has a total area of 147 570 sq.km with a population of about 150 million. The land can be classified as floodplains 79%, hilly areas 12.6% and terrace soils 8.3%. Bangladesh holds huge wetland areas and about half of the country could be classified as wetland during the rainy season. Bangladesh holds nearly about 50% wetland surface areas, consisting of about 700 rivers, creeks, streams and other water bodies locally known as haor, baor, beel, doba, pukur, dighi and khal. About 6.7% of Bangladesh remains under water all the year round, 21% is deeply flooded and 35% experiences shallow inundation (FAO, 1988). The average discharge of water in Bangladesh delta in the flood season is more than five million cusec. The wetlands in Bangladesh covers a wide verity of active ecosystems ranging from natural lakes, freshwater marshes (about 400 haors), mangrove forest (about 577, 100 ha), oxbow lakes/ baors (about 54488 ha), freshwater depressions of about 1,000 beels, fish ponds and tanks (about 147, 000 ha), man-made reservoir (Kaptai lake) and seasonal inundated extensive floodplains (Akonda, 1989 cited in Akbar Ali Khan 1993 and DoF 1985).

Annex-1 shows the wetland condition of Chittagong and the surroundings of the study area. From the figure, it is seen that Chittagong has several natural wetland areas on both sides of the river Karnafully. These wetland areas act as the natural rainwater run-off reservoir for the surrounding areas.