The global environment protection campaigners have been advocating greenhouse gas cut for the last 40/50 years. Of late, repeated climate summits and expert-level conferences have fixed the reduction of the co2 emission at 1.5C above the pre-Industrial levels. Cutting the harmful greenhouse gas became a worldwide goal. As a corollary, large cities in the industrialised, developing and poorer countries continued being singled out as great environmental polluters. The densely populated or industrialised urban areas in the South, Southeast Asian regions eventually emerged as great centres of greenhouse gas emission. The Bangladesh capital Dhaka was once recognised as an environmentally agreeable, but growing, city --- unlike Lahore, Delhi, Karachi or Kolkata. In the present decade, Dhaka seems to have been stuck in a place with others notorious for their terrible Air Quality Index (AQI). To the despair of many, the Bangladesh capital remains caught up in its poor ranking along with a few cities year in and year out. These cities, however, are spread across the globe --- ranging from Jakarta, Xinxiang, Lagos, and some Latin American capitals like Lima.
Against this backdrop of global urban pollution, caused by unplanned industrial growth, population density, anarchic transport movement etc, a handful of organisations appear to be serious about innovating green ways of life. In dealing with pollution, these environmental groups remain focused on a communication network that doesn't depend on fuel. Instead of cars, they would like to prefer bicycles. Over the last few years, people in some European countries have avowedly turned to bicycles for their commutes. Due to the communication modes' fast rising popularity in the Netherlands, cycling lately came to be known as 'Going Dutch'. Cycling or 'Going Dutch' 2.6 kilometres a day like people in The Netherlands do 'would save' mankind from 686 million tonnes of co2 or bring with it associated health benefits due to more exercises and improved air quality. The latter development will occur due to the absorption of the excess carbon dioxide by the earth's plant life. It may appear perplexing to the general people; some may find it an environmental riddle. But this is what happens in reality. A country with a relatively little population and large forests is expected to reap great volumes of fruits for people preferring manually used bicycle to co2 emitting automobiles --- and vice versa. However, the common belief that with more automobiles relative to using bicycles or electric two-wheelers city-dwellers will expedite environmental catastrophes still reigns supreme. In order to clear this theoretical phenomenon, apparently unintelligible, environmentalists and activists ought to organise local-level seminars to bring the plain truth out of the layers of fog.
When it comes to the benefits of riding bicycles, The Netherlands is followed by Denmark, another country in Europe. As has been observed by a professor at the University of Southern Denmark's Department of Green Technology, research has shown that bicycles have an important future role in reducing global transports' 'carbon footprint'. The message that underlies the whole issue is the world needs more innovative light-weight design for cycles and electrification. Teams of researchers have lately compiled a global data-set of bicycle riders and the transport's use in countries since the early 1960s. The results conclude that between 1962 and 2015, the global production of cycles crossed that of cars. China in those years occupied nearly two-thirds of the production, manufacturing 123 million cycles in 2015. Sixty countries were included in the data-set. It has shown the share of bicycle use for journeys was only five per cent. Some countries didn't have sufficient cycles in their stocks, while others were in a position to boast of their large number of cycle ownership. The US was one of them. The country, however, used to view cycling more as a leisure-time spending one than as a practical mode of transport.
Without delving into the not-widely-discussed fallout of the greenhouse gas emissions from the automobile fuels, the layman can muster the ability to reach the universally accepted fact: the transport sector accounting for one-fourth of all types of fuel-related greenhouse gas emissions which keep continuing the process of global warming. Moreover, the worldwide transport demand is predicted to treble by the mid-century. Half of the emissions are predicted to come from passenger cars. As a way out, the modernist industry owners and governments are increasingly turning to electric vehicles. The future of the transport world appears to be bright, with global sales reports saying 6.75 million units had already sold in 2021.
Coming to Bangladesh, its cities and towns have been hooked on bicycles for nearly a century. In the earlier times, it was the urban middle class which would go for a bicycle. Dhaka-based passenger buses had yet to be in full service in the fast emerging city. The emergence of bicycles was modest, with its movement being confined to the act of travelling between the old-Dhaka commercial segments and the city's far-flung suburbs. Many areas had yet to see the brick-laid concrete roads required for automobiles. Thanks to their plain build and mechanical resilience, use of bicycles kept becoming widespread among the fast-rising lower-middle and middle classes. A large number of them were office-goers. The 21st century Dhaka is overwhelmed with public buses and private cars. Place of bicycles continues to be declining. The absence of cycles doesn't become conspicuous thanks to the streets being chockablock with different types of automobiles. Those also include motorbikes and cycle-rickshaws moving in swarms. The menace of cycles being pushed towards the margins of Dhaka's traffic movement started in the mid-1970s. In such a situation, environmental activists are seen becoming vocal about encouraging the young city residents to pick cycles as a mode of commute. Like seen in many other big cities, youths and a lot of middle-aged people have long been commuting to and from colleges and universities, and also workplaces by using cycles. With the fast increase in buses, minibuses, private cars and other vehicles, the cyclists found it difficult to make way through the traffic melee. Moreover, most of the automobiles, especially buses and mini-buses, bothered little for abiding by the traffic rules. It created a panic of sorts among the lightweight and sans-engine bicycles. As the cyclists began vacating the roads out of fear, the campaigns advocating their rights to move along roads got louder. Environmental activists joined them.
In the face of demands for separate routes for cyclists, successive city authorities promised to build separate cycle routes. As had been feared, those pledges eventually fizzled out. The much-publicised opening of a completely separate cycle route initiated by the Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) couldn't go further. Creating a separate lane for cyclists on the two sides of northern Dhaka's wide roads, like the Manik Mia Avenue, wouldn't have been a challenging task. But due to the creation of unforeseen bottlenecks, the great project couldn't get off the ground. Many other newly constructed wide roads could have emulated the instance of the DNCC. To the disappointment of thousands of passionate Dhaka cyclists, few in the authorities seem to have much time to pay attention to the latter. There are strong reasons for the Dhaka bikers' feeling of being cornered. The AQI report periodically locates Dhaka among the world cities with poor air quality. Encouraging bicycle riding alongside cutting down on automobile movements, i.e. promoting 'Going Dutch', can surely lead to a clean environment for Dhaka.
