Heeding the call for a liveable environment

Prime Minister Tarique Rahman's latest remarks urging collective action for a pollution‑free Bangladesh must be heeded. Pollution in our country, especially in our major cities, is a daily assault on public health, economic productivity, and the basic livability of our cities. As such, when the head of our government recognizes the issue and calls for unity and urgency, the nation collectively must listen and act. Of course, our pollution crisis is multidimensional. We have already spoken of our struggling air quality in major cities that routinely falls into hazardous levels in our first editorial, but that is just one aspect of it. Rivers are choked with industrial waste, sewage, and plastic. Noise pollution has become a constant urban stressor, and unplanned development continues to erode green spaces and natural buffers. The consequences of this pollution are visible everywhere and affect everyone: rising respiratory illnesses, contaminated water sources, declining biodiversity, and a quality of life that is deteriorating even as the country strives for economic progress. The prime minister is right to emphasize that this fight cannot be won by the government alone. Pollution is produced by factories that ignore regulations, by corporations that dump waste into canals, by unfit vehicles that belch smoke, and by institutions that treat environmental rules as optional. A pollution‑free Bangladesh requires responsibility at every level, from policymakers to businesses to ordinary citizens. A liveable Bangladesh must be the goal, and it is possible only if we treat pollution as the national emergency it is.