The people of Bangladesh have had for thousands of years an intimate relationship with water, both depending on river flows for farming (about one quarter of the country becomes thinly covered by water every year in the monsoon season), and periodically being subjected to floods from both river and ocean. In recent years, some Bangladesh government officials have proposed a massive network of embankments intended to prevent river flooding. The proposal has been very controversial, both because of its costs, and because, some argue, the project could eventually make the country even more vulnerable to flooding. The issue is, in part, whether it is possible to firmly control, rather than simply influence, the paths followed by a large and complex river system.

Sources:
o Fred Pearce, The Dammed, "Banking on a Flood-free Future," pp. 242-251. According to Thayer Scudder, "The primary effect to date of river basin development in tropical Africa has been to transfer the resources of rural riverine habitats to the urban, residential, commercial and industrial sectors." (quoted in Pearce, The Dammed, pp. 252). , 252-256; and on the River Senegal.