The Earth as a bank and its ‘defaulters’

Long ago, depending on whom you ask, there was a time when the Buriganga River was known to bring life to Dhaka, flowing gently beside the city, waters brimming with fish and ferries, shimmering silver under the moonlight. As Dhaka's skyline began to grow, the city became a machine, and Buriganga became its dumping ground. Factories, textile dyeing plants, tanneries, plastics, metalwork, and soap production multiplied on its banks.

Every day, without pause, tonnes of untreated chemical waste poured in. The colour of the water turned red or green, and black, no longer retaining its glory. Never clean again.



My father used to tell me how he could drink water from the Buriganga River. But now we need to cover our faces just to pass it. When I was young, and I would visit my grandmother in the village, we would have chats where she would share stories about her life and the land she lived in.

The stories back then seemed very menial, stories of herding animals and growing their own produce. But these stories seem powerful to me today. One thing she said stuck with me, "We used to live with the land, not just on it.

" My version of living with the land was appreciating nature, the sky, the stars, and the trees around me in the concrete jungle called Dhaka. Even though her version of living with the land was different from mine, I could feel it. But in time, that feeling faded away, I lost connection with the land, and I ended up just living on it.

Once, when I was a young researcher, I was on a factory visit and had the opportunity to talk to a factory worker about their environmental initiatives. She told me a very nice story about how the factory handed out small potted plants as a part of their green initiative, meant to boost morale and show care for the environment. I asked how she perceived it, and she told me about her little house in the nearby slum that she shared with her husband and their child.

There was no window in her house, but the plants brightened up her home, and it inspired her to find plants on the roads and build up a nice little row of plants in front of her room. She told me, in confidence, of course, that she can't stop the pollution in the area, but she can create a corner that makes her home beautiful. These stories remind me how loving the environment hurts—the planet, these ecosystems, they try to work with us, but we forget to work together.

I recently came across the concept that the Earth is a bank. A bank where you take a loan of the "resources," which ultimately need to be paid back. When you stop paying back, the Earth will come back to ask for what is hers.

The average person is not concerned with the environment, because let's face it, there are so many more things that we are to be concerned about right now. I recently came across a Facebook post, filled with nostalgia for big houses of the 80s and 90s, where you could smell the rain from every corner. But the reality is that we no longer have the natural capital to live like that.

We don't have the space or the resources to fend for all the people in the country living the way things used to be. And on top of that, every day, a new nightmarish scenario pops up. News of wars, something or the other is burning, someone or the other is looting, or harassing women and minorities, and social media is just adding all its fuel to the dumpster fire that the world is right now.

But that's the thing: these are all linked with our degrading environment. They all intersect with our loans from the bank that is Earth. When there is no balance of power, environmental justice can become harder to achieve because vulnerable communities, like women, minorities and Indigenous groups, lack the political power to defend their lands.

Land grabbing by powerful elites and the exploitation of rivers and forests often happen unnoticed in times of political instability. For some countries, regressive environmental policies, like backing out of important global agreements, might be implemented to benefit corporations and industries, while disregarding climate science or environmental sustainability. This leads to resource depletion and pollution in the name of growth.

Misinformation campaigns, which are rampant on social media, can undermine climate science or distract people from environmental crises. In places where environmental issues are already political, social media has become an arena for discrediting or shifting blame. Public opinion and political decision-making on climate issues can be manipulated by corporate interests, leading to delayed actions and unsustainable policies.

Finally, let's not forget, the ones that take on the highest amount of loans from the bank of Earth are the ones who don't pay it off, leaving the weight of the debt to fall on those who borrowed the least. And we all know what the ones who don't pay back are called. And unfortunately, when it comes to the bank of the Earth, most of us can be called that.

Raida A. K. Reza is doctoral researcher at United Nations University's Institute for Integrated Management of Material Fluxes and of Resources (UNU-FLORES), Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development (IOER), and Technische Universität Dresden and the founder of Zero Waste Bangladesh (ZWBD).

Views expressed in this article are the author's own. Follow The Daily Star Opinion on Facebook for the latest opinions, commentaries, and analyses by experts and professionals. To contribute your article or letter to The Daily Star Opinion, see our guidelines for submission .

Long ago, depending on whom you ask, there was a time when the Buriganga River was known to bring life to Dhaka, flowing gently beside the city, waters brimming with fish and ferries, shimmering silver under the moonlight. As Dhaka's skyline began to grow, the city became a machine, and Buriganga became its dumping ground. Factories, textile dyeing plants, tanneries, plastics, metalwork, and soap production multiplied on its banks.

Every day, without pause, tonnes of untreated chemical waste poured in. The colour of the water turned red or green, and black, no longer retaining its glory. Never clean again.

My father used to tell me how he could drink water from the Buriganga River. But now we need to cover our faces just to pass it. When I was young, and I would visit my grandmother in the village, we would have chats where she would share stories about her life and the land she lived in.

The stories back then seemed very menial, stories of herding animals and growing their own produce. But these stories seem powerful to me today. One thing she said stuck with me, "We used to live with the land, not just on it.

" My version of living with the land was appreciating nature, the sky, the stars, and the trees around me in the concrete jungle called Dhaka. Even though her version of living with the land was different from mine, I could feel it. But in time, that feeling faded away, I lost connection with the land, and I ended up just living on it.

Once, when I was a young researcher, I was on a factory visit and had the opportunity to talk to a factory worker about their environmental initiatives. She told me a very nice story about how the factory handed out small potted plants as a part of their green initiative, meant to boost morale and show care for the environment. I asked how she perceived it, and she told me about her little house in the nearby slum that she shared with her husband and their child.

There was no window in her house, but the plants brightened up her home, and it inspired her to find plants on the roads and build up a nice little row of plants in front of her room. She told me, in confidence, of course, that she can't stop the pollution in the area, but she can create a corner that makes her home beautiful. These stories remind me how loving the environment hurts—the planet, these ecosystems, they try to work with us, but we forget to work together.

I recently came across the concept that the Earth is a bank. A bank where you take a loan of the "resources," which ultimately need to be paid back. When you stop paying back, the Earth will come back to ask for what is hers.

The average person is not concerned with the environment, because let's face it, there are so many more things that we are to be concerned about right now. I recently came across a Facebook post, filled with nostalgia for big houses of the 80s and 90s, where you could smell the rain from every corner. But the reality is that we no longer have the natural capital to live like that.

We don't have the space or the resources to fend for all the people in the country living the way things used to be. And on top of that, every day, a new nightmarish scenario pops up. News of wars, something or the other is burning, someone or the other is looting, or harassing women and minorities, and social media is just adding all its fuel to the dumpster fire that the world is right now.

But that's the thing: these are all linked with our degrading environment. They all intersect with our loans from the bank that is Earth. When there is no balance of power, environmental justice can become harder to achieve because vulnerable communities, like women, minorities and Indigenous groups, lack the political power to defend their lands.

Land grabbing by powerful elites and the exploitation of rivers and forests often happen unnoticed in times of political instability. For some countries, regressive environmental policies, like backing out of important global agreements, might be implemented to benefit corporations and industries, while disregarding climate science or environmental sustainability. This leads to resource depletion and pollution in the name of growth.

Misinformation campaigns, which are rampant on social media, can undermine climate science or distract people from environmental crises. In places where environmental issues are already political, social media has become an arena for discrediting or shifting blame. Public opinion and political decision-making on climate issues can be manipulated by corporate interests, leading to delayed actions and unsustainable policies.

Finally, let's not forget, the ones that take on the highest amount of loans from the bank of Earth are the ones who don't pay it off, leaving the weight of the debt to fall on those who borrowed the least. And we all know what the ones who don't pay back are called. And unfortunately, when it comes to the bank of the Earth, most of us can be called that.

Raida A. K. Reza is doctoral researcher at United Nations University's Institute for Integrated Management of Material Fluxes and of Resources (UNU-FLORES), Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development (IOER), and Technische Universität Dresden and the founder of Zero Waste Bangladesh (ZWBD).

Views expressed in this article are the author's own. Follow The Daily Star Opinion on Facebook for the latest opinions, commentaries, and analyses by experts and professionals. To contribute your article or letter to The Daily Star Opinion, see our guidelines for submission .

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