Dhaka needs to be liveable with greeneries to breathe

It is quite disheartening that our capital Dhaka continues to shrink its greeneries alarmingly. We have unfortunately been losing a portion of our natural beauty in the name of progress due to our so-called march towards urban development. As per newspaper reports, Dhaka at present is experiencing an unprecedented level of urbanisation. It is now listed among the worst cities in the world in terms of quality of living.
Marking a landscape of so-called progress, Dhaka has to witness the construction of many flyovers, metro rail tracks and elevated expressways in line with the expanding of urban housing as well. The uncharted cost of these projects frustrates the urban living in Dhaka pushing it more hazardous mostly due to the unavailability of trees as they should be as per the area of the city. The little greeneries the city retains from years and decades back have either had to be cut down or are already in the process of disappearing.
Urban green spaces such as parks, public playgrounds, riverside, and lakeside footpaths are well-managed regions of a city that acts as a purifier to clean the polluted environment. Studies suggest having 15 to 20 per cent green space areas in a city from the environmental and health perspective and a liveable city should contain 25 per cent greeneries of its total area. Unfortunately, the capital Dhaka has barely five percent greenery due to the lack of regular plantations and no maintenance of the existing ones for the sake of unplanned urbanisation and development.
With utter disappointment, we are to say that neither of the two city corporations, Dhaka South and Dhaka North, has any statistics on the number of trees planted on city roads, islands and footpaths. More horribly to say, there are several cases where city corporation contractors, engineers and also influential locals cut a significant number of trees, many of which are century-old, for road widening and infrastructure development projects. In addition, Dhaka has started experiencing a new trend of undertaking beautification projects every four to five years which requires huge uprooting of large trees, but no proper plan to compensate with substantial plantation.
Though some projects have been undertaken over the years to plant trees in different parts of the capital, it is not the be-all-end-all when there is no coordination among the authorities like two city corporations, RAJUK, WASA and others. We must say we can’t endure more of a concrete jungle in Dhaka for living with no space for healthy breathing.