DHAKA — In pre-monsoon the heat of May, five teenage boys used a rope with knots in it to scale a wall and enter the national botanical gardens in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. They dropped down next to a big pond surrounded by foliage encircled by a pedestrian path. Beyond the walls, the youths were fruit sellers, hawking guava, mango and seasonally fresh fruit on packed city buses that transport Dhaka’s working-class residents. They come to the gardens when it is just too hot, or the air quality too poor, to ride the buses. The National Botanical Garden costs 20 taka, about $0.17, to enter, but the rope allows Junayed, 17, and Akash, 18, to enter whenever they please without paying. “We can come over the wall, and we can come through the gate too. That is why we come here,” they said. As they relaxed beneath the trees, staring across the pond, the boys relished the relative quiet of the preserved space. Often, they visit in the morning or the evening with their other friends; sometimes they come twice a day. Junayed and Akash said that beyond the walls, the amount of green space has decreased during their lives. Land once covered in trees, shrubs and grass now hosts apartments and stores. “There were fields and we played there,” one of the teens said. There used to be ponds in their area, but they were filled in to create ground for new construction. In Dhaka and other cities…This article was originally published on Mongabay
The post Conserving & restoring waterways can mitigate extreme urban heat in Bangladesh first appeared on EnviroLink Network.