CLIMATE change is no longer a looming threat for Bangladesh. It has arrived, thick and heavy, in the very air we breathe. It lingers in our lungs, stings in our throats, and hangs over Dhaka like an oppressive curtain no one asked for. This is not some distant crisis forecasted by scientists; this is the reality of living in one of the world鈥檚 most polluted cities. And more than a matter of air quality, it is a matter of justice, a matter of whose voices are heard and whose realities are erased.
When I lived in Dhaka, my mornings began not with breakfast or tea, but with masks, not for Covid, but for survival. I would help my niece secure hers before school. On days she forgot, she coughed through the night. At first it terrified us. Now it is simply part of the routine. Children in Dhaka grow up with masks as naturally as with schoolbooks. They play football beneath a grey sky no one even points at anymore. And perhaps the most haunting part? No one seems surprised. Not the teachers. Not the parents. Not even the children.
A simple online search confirms what we already know too well: 鈥楧haka air pollution,鈥� 鈥楢QI Bangladesh,鈥� 鈥榙eadliest cities to breathe in.鈥� The data is unrelenting. In January 2025, over 70 children a day were treated for pneumonia at the Bangladesh Shishu Hospital and Institute 鈥� eight died in one week alone. In early April, the city鈥檚 Air Quality Index hit 152, officially 鈥榰nhealthy鈥�. Scientists liken a day breathing Dhaka鈥檚 air to smoking 22 cigarettes. Still, life goes on. We walk. We work. We inhale.
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Silenced by design
BUT this is more than a public health emergency. It is a crisis of voice. Those who suffer the most, the roadside vendors, the rickshaw pullers, the factory workers, the mothers with infants on their hips 鈥� are almost entirely absent from policy discourse and media framing. This silence is no accident. As philosopher Miranda Fricker describes, this is 鈥榚pistemic injustice鈥�: a form of harm that denies marginalised people the credibility of their own experiences and knowledge.
In Dhaka, this manifests in quiet resignation. A mother assumes her child鈥檚 chronic cough is just a bad cold, not an effect of airborne toxins. A garment worker I once spoke with believed her recurring miscarriages were simply bad luck, never imagining air pollution could be a cause. In our family WhatsApp groups, we do not speak of the AQI. We feel the heaviness in our chests, yet lack the vocabulary or authority to name it.
This silence is not ignorance. It is the result of systemic exclusion. To speak of pollution as merely a technical problem is to miss the deeper point: it is also a problem of power. Whose knowledge is valued? Whose suffering is seen? And whose right to clean air is worth protecting?
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Power and pollution
THE culprits of Dhaka鈥檚 polluted air are frequently named: unregulated brick kilns, traffic congestion, rampant construction, outdated vehicles. But behind these symptoms lies a far more entrenched issue 鈥� a planning and governance culture that continuously privileges the elite and sidesteps the urban poor.
Our urban infrastructure choices are telling. Flyovers are prioritised over green spaces. Highways snake through communities without environmental buffers. Environmental regulations exist in theory, but enforcement is sporadic and often conveniently bypassed by powerful interests. Public health awareness campaigns speak more to international donors than to those most affected, often delivered in inaccessible formats or elite registers.
Even our media discourse is shaped by charts and satellite images rather than human stories. It is easier to print an AQI score than to listen to the wheezing of a domestic worker. And as always, the heaviest burden falls on the most vulnerable. The World Bank has already confirmed it: the poorest women and children 鈥� those living nearest to brickfields, highways, and industrial zones 鈥� bear the brunt of the air crisis.
We are not lacking in data. What we lack is empathy and a politics of inclusion. We reduce pollution to statistics and solutions to policy white papers 鈥� thereby forgetting the people who live, breathe, and die in its shadow.
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Listening from the ground up
IF BREATHING is a political act in Dhaka, then clean air policy must begin with the politics of listening. And not to international consultants or urban think tanks, but to those who navigate the city鈥檚 air on foot, on bicycle, and under tarpaulin.
City leadership must engage directly with schoolchildren, garment workers, rickshaw pullers, and parents. Their accounts should inform our policy decisions 鈥� not as anecdotal footnotes, but as the foundation for meaningful reform. Citizen-led air monitoring networks, equipped with affordable sensors and mobile-based reporting, can decentralise data collection and make the invisible visible.
Public health campaigns must be grounded in local realities. Warnings and updates should be broadcast in Bengali and neighbourhood dialects, not buried in English press releases. Community groups, especially women鈥檚 networks, should co-design these campaigns. And small-scale interventions, such as filtering classroom air, regulating truck routes near markets, and issuing pollution alerts, could reduce immediate harm.
But this requires a shift in worldview: we must stop framing pollution as a technical error and start treating it as a justice issue. Lived experience is not 鈥榮oft data鈥�, it is evidence. And only by validating that evidence can we begin to rebuild public trust and ensure every citizen鈥檚 right to breathe freely.
Dhaka鈥檚 smog does more than choke lungs. It chokes memory, voice, and power. The most affected are also the least heard. This is a layered injustice 鈥� environmental, epistemic, social. If we are to confront this crisis honestly, we must move beyond measuring particles per million. We must ask: Whose knowledge matters? Whose stories are missing?
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Civil society鈥檚 role
LISTENING, however, is only the beginning. Dhaka鈥檚 citizens have not been silent. They have been speaking, in coughs, in protests, in silence worn like a second skin. What is needed now is not just empathy, but solidarity. A collective, organised push from civil society is essential.
Local health workers, women鈥檚 groups, and student unions already enjoy trust in their communities. These networks can be mobilised for participatory air quality monitoring, civic education, and health response. Imagine 鈥榓ir justice clubs鈥� across the city 鈥� in schools, in wards 鈥� where children map pollution levels and share findings through murals, theatre, local radio, or mobile alerts. Pollution must be made visible in human terms, not just numerical ones.
Journalists, too, have a critical role to play. Reporting on pollution cannot stop at AQI charts. The lived experiences of street vendors, domestic workers, and residents of informal settlements must be central. Social media and mobile storytelling offer new opportunities to overcome language and class barriers. Ethical journalism must challenge the hierarchy that privileges elite, English-speaking voices.
Education must evolve as well. Environmental literacy should not be tucked away in dry textbook chapters. It must become a platform for mobilisation 鈥� in schools, madrassas, community centres, and NGOs. Teaching children that clean air is a right, not a luxury, is foundational civic education. And teaching them to demand that right is political empowerment.
We must stop pretending this is merely a policy problem. It is a social movement waiting to take form. What Dhaka needs is an alliance 鈥� of community activists, educators, health professionals, ethical media, and young people 鈥� united in the pursuit of clean air as a matter of life, dignity, and democracy.
As global climate finance flows into Bangladesh, civil society must demand transparency, inclusion, and equity. We must ask: Who benefits from these funds? Who decides how they鈥檙e spent? And are the communities paying the price with their lungs included in the conversation?
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Right to breathe
AIR pollution may be described in parts per million, but the right to breathe is not a scientific metric 鈥� it is a political claim. It is the right to be heard, to be counted, to live with dignity.
In Dhaka, that right is under siege. But it is not lost. If we begin by listening, truly listening, to those most affected, we can build a different kind of response. One rooted not in distant consultancy reports, but in lived truth. One that sees every cough not as background noise, but as a signal. One that remembers: behind every statistic, there is a person. A child. A breath.
Environmental justice begins not with policy, but with power, and with the courage to shift it. In Dhaka, the fight for clean air is the fight for a fairer city. And in that fight, voice is as vital as oxygen.
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Nur A Mahajabin Khan, is a researcher specialising in media and communication currently based in UK.