Heatwave subsides, but does so our concern for greenery?

On a blazing noon in Eskaton Garden road, rickshaw-puller Robiul Alam took a break.

He pulled out a bottle of water and took a refreshing swig. Then he just rested.

"I work eight hours every day under unbearable heat. It feels like the skin on my back and chest is peeling off. This is why now I am just sitting here for the last half an hour," Robiul said.

For the past couple of months, Robiul had been leaving his home around 3am, despite having worked all day.

Sleep meant little to him. There was solace on the road. Back home, there was only heat, exacerbated by frequent power outages.

The heatwave, which descended on the country, had united people from all walks of life, who joined hands and amplified their voices to raise concern about the situation.

Back in April, temperatures had soared to 40.4 degrees Celsius, which was the highest in 58 years for the capital, Dhaka.

But this concern came to the fore, only when the crisis hit home for a class that apparently "mattered" more.

In the 1500s, artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder produced a painting about people's indifference to distant suffering.

The piece, called "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus", shows a farmer ploughing his field in the foreground while Icarus is drowning in the sea in the distance, surrounded by melted feathers, his legs flailing in the air. (In Greek mythology, Icarus, son of inventor Daedalus, perished by flying too near the Sun with waxen wings).

There are many studies that suggest people's behaviour toward climate change varies based on psychological distance.

People of central Asia are not as concerned about global warming as the people of the sinking Maldives.

But go around central Asia where drought is an everyday reality and the concerns begin to differ.

Conflating problems

As attention turned towards the authorities and their often-criticised methods of mitigating the heat crisis, spells of rain came as a relief: both for the people and the powers that be.

Social media was flooded with posts romaticising the rain.

But, the waxing lyrical would soon die down. The heat stress would return. 

In April this year, when the first heatwave struck the country, load-shedding turned out to be the main headache of the government. Even though the recent heatwave was perceived as more severe than the previous one, possibly due to increased humidity, it failed to draw proper attention to the underlying cause of the scorching heat.

Global instability was cited as one of the reasons behind the inability to ensure uninterrupted electricity supply.

But load-shedding wasn't the key here.

The deaths of people – at least 20, mostly low-income workers – since the heatwave, according to the Disaster Forum, was not always down to not having electricity.

This raises the question of whether uninterrupted electricity supply can truly safeguard the working class. As they labour under the scorching sun, it does not matter to them much whether the power is on or has gone.

Turning towards the green

The solution can be a cooler, greener city, which shades against the natural elements.

Without that, people are left to simmer in a city turned into a furnace.

Trees play a vital role in releasing a significant amount of water through transpiration.

This process involves water absorption by plant roots, transportation through the plant's vascular system (xylem), and eventual release as vapour through stomata—tiny pores primarily found on the undersides of leaves.

This water evaporates into the surrounding air, contributing to the overall moisture content and humidity.

Scientists studying the plants in the Amazon rainforest discovered a white cloud-like layer above the world's largest mangrove forest. Further investigation revealed that this cloud was composed of vapour released by the trees.

The scientists also discovered that the volume of water released by trees in the Amazon forest exceeds the amount evaporated from the Amazon River, indicating that forest contributed more to cause rain than the river.

Making new power plants, ensuring electricity, focusing on upper and middle-class solutions to problems without class affiliations then isn't the way forward.

For now, the focus should be on safeguarding the most vulnerable. Question is, whether this aspect is even being concerned.