16 year old Foysak strains to remove some of the trash from the bank of Buriganga River in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Foysak is among thousands of migrants from rural Bangladesh who do menial work on and around Buriganga River. 400,000 people migrate from farmlands to Dhaka every year 70% of them quote environmental shock as a main reason for migration. These families usually end up in the poorest, most flood-prone areas of the city where they live in a constant fear of another flood.
Increased rains and more unstable weather patterns caused by climate change combined with inadequate flood infrastructure and over urbanization in the city contribute to the frequent floods that inundate the city after each larger rain.
Buriganga River is economically important to Dhaka, it connects it to the system of rivers and canals that crisscross the country.
Today the river is highly polluted by multiple sources. The chemical waste of mills and factories, household waste, medical waste, sewage, dead animals, plastics, and oil are some of the Buriganga's main pollutants. The city of Dhaka discharges about 4,500 tons of solid waste every day and most of it is released into the Buriganga. Most of the industrial units have no sewage treatment or effluent treatment plants (ETPs) of their own.
July 18th., 2017.
Photo by Marcin Szczepanski/Sinking Cities Project
- Filename
- Bangladesh_0021.jpg
- Copyright
- Marcin Szczepanski
- Image Size
- 2000x1333 / 2.2MB
- www.marcinvisuals.com
