Soil, air and water: a call to protect the three elements life depends on

Soil, air and water, the three main elements of nature, are an inseparable part of human life, and all three are under growing pressure. That was the argument of an article by Samiran Biswas published in the Agriculture and Nature section of the Bangladeshi news site Jagonews24 on 7 June 2026, two days after World Environment Day. The writer warned that soil was losing its fertility, air was being polluted and sources of safe water were shrinking day by day, and called protecting the environment not just a duty but a condition of humanity's survival.

The article opened with a few lines set in quotation marks: "Healthy soil, clean air and pure water have sustained human civilisation. This store of life force is steadily running out, and will soon push the world into danger." Within those sentences, the writer said, lies one of the world's biggest realities. In the writer's account, human development, industrialisation, urbanisation and consumerist lifestyles had put nature's basic resources under extreme pressure, so that not only the environment but the very existence of human civilisation faced a deep crisis.

The piece took the three elements in turn, then widened to climate change, the link between farming and the environment, the loss of biodiversity, plastic pollution and what the writer called carbon smart agriculture, before closing with a list of actions for individuals, farmers and the state. The sections below follow that order and add, for each point, what official and research bodies had published on the subject up to the date of the article.

The article appeared in the week of World Environment Day, which the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) leads every year on 5 June and which has been observed since 1973. The United Nations describes it as the largest global platform for environmental public outreach. In 2026 the day was hosted by the Republic of Azerbaijan and framed as "A Global Call for Climate Action", with the campaign line "Inspired by Nature. For Climate. For Our Future." Bangladeshi newspapers carried a Bengali version of that line as the year's theme in the days before the observance.

The climate backdrop was stark. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) confirmed on 10 January 2025 that 2024 had been the warmest year on record, with the global average surface temperature about 1.55°C (plus or minus 0.13°C) above the 1850-1900 average. On 14 January 2026 the WMO reported that 2025 had been one of the three warmest years on record, at 1.44°C above the pre-industrial level, that the 2023-2025 average stood at 1.48°C, and that the eleven years from 2015 to 2025 were the eleven warmest in all eight datasets it uses. These are the measurements behind the writer's statement that global warming was steadily raising the earth's average temperature.

The writer described soil as far more than a medium for growing crops: one of the world's largest living ecosystems, kept alive by countless micro-organisms, earthworms, beneficial fungi and other organisms, and a key medium for food production, forest growth and carbon storage. Excessive chemical fertiliser and pesticide, unplanned cultivation, deforestation and industrial waste, the article said, were degrading soil health fast: fertile land was turning barren, organic matter was declining and farm production was at risk.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has put the stakes in similar terms. In a message to agriculture ministers at the Global Forum for Food and Agriculture in Berlin in January 2022, FAO Director-General QU Dongyu said that as much as 95 percent of global food production depends on soil, and that a third of the world's soils are already degraded.

For Bangladesh, Banglapedia, the national encyclopedia published by the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, lists the main causes of land degradation as erosion, contamination, compaction, the loss of organic matter through improper farming practices, salinisation and waterlogging, along with land transformation, deforestation, urbanisation and intensive farming. It singles out intensive cultivation of high-yielding varieties combined with imbalanced fertiliser use, and almost no use of organic and bio-fertiliser, as a major cause, and recommends balanced fertilisation through an integrated soil and nutrient management approach.

The encyclopedia's entry on soil fertility describes the organic matter status of Bangladesh soils as one of the lowest in the world, and says the country has kept producing good crops largely through synthetic fertilisers and improved seed. Most soils, it notes, respond better when organic matter is added along with inorganic fertiliser, and the use of compost and green manure crops is encouraged. It also reports that 70 to 80 percent of the soils are deficient in sulphur, and that demand for zinc fertiliser rose from 3,000 tonnes in 2000-01 to 42,000 tonnes in 2010-11, a sign of widespread zinc deficiency. The Soil Resource Development Institute (SRDI) grades soils by acidity, from very strongly acidic (pH below 4.5) to very strongly alkaline, and by organic matter content, from very low to very high: these are the kinds of measures behind the writer's advice to test the soil and follow balanced fertiliser management.

Salinity is another pressure the writer named. Banglapedia's entry on saline soil puts the land affected by salinity in 2009 at about 1.06 million hectares, in the deltaic floodplains and offshore islands around the northern apex of the Bay of Bengal, mainly in coastal districts such as Khulna, Satkhira, Bagerhat, Barisal, Patuakhali, Barguna, Bhola, Noakhali, Lakshmipur, Chittagong and Cox's Bazar. Coastal soils there are slightly to moderately saline on the surface and more saline below; salinity rises from February, peaks in April and May and falls sharply after June.

People breathe thousands of times a day, the writer noted, yet that air was polluted by vehicle smoke, factory emissions, the burning of fossil fuels and the destruction of forests. Air pollution, the article said, was raising breathing problems, lung disease, heart disease and other health risks, while rising greenhouse gases were speeding up climate change.

The World Health Organization (WHO), in its fact sheet on ambient air quality and health dated October 2024, estimated that outdoor air pollution caused 4.2 million premature deaths worldwide in 2019, and that 99 percent of the world's population lived where WHO air quality guideline levels were not met. Of those deaths, about 68 percent were due to ischaemic heart disease and stroke, 14 percent to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, 14 percent to acute lower respiratory infections and 4 percent to lung cancer. The WHO names transport, industry, household energy for cooking, heating and lighting, power generation and the handling of municipal and agricultural waste among the main sources.

Bangladesh sat near the top of the world's pollution tables. The 2025 World Air Quality Report by the Swiss air-quality technology company IQAir, released on 24 March 2026, ranked Bangladesh as the second most polluted country, after Pakistan, with an annual average PM2.5 concentration of 66.1 micrograms per cubic metre. The WHO's annual guideline for PM2.5 is 5 micrograms per cubic metre; the report found that only 14 percent of the 9,446 cities it covered met it, and that 130 of the 143 countries, regions and territories in its data exceeded it.

A World Bank blog post of 20 November 2024 by the Bank's regional director for sustainable development in South Asia described the national picture. Annual average fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in Bangladesh ranged from 60 to 100 micrograms per cubic metre, and from 90 to 100 in Dhaka, with levels in the dry months from November to March two or three times the annual average. Breathing Dhaka's air, the post said, can be equivalent to smoking 1.7 cigarettes a day, and ambient and household air pollution together led to more than 159,000 premature deaths a year in the country and more than 2.5 billion days lived with illness. It named brick kilns and road vehicles as well-documented emitters and pointed to less obvious sources: about 74.2 percent of the population used solid fuels for cooking, and the open burning of municipal waste accounted for 11 percent of population-weighted annual mean PM2.5 in Dhaka.

Banglapedia's entry on air pollution adds that in rural areas brick kilns and cooking stoves burning wood, coal and biomass are the principal sources of emissions, and that the Department of Environment (DoE) identified two-stroke engines in auto-rickshaws, tempos, mini-trucks and motorcycles as major polluters in the cities before such engines were discouraged.

Life is unimaginable without water, the writer said, yet safe water was growing scarcer in many parts of the world. Rivers, canals, beels and other water bodies were being polluted by industrial waste, plastic and chemicals; excessive groundwater extraction was lowering the water table; and in many places salinity and arsenic contamination threatened human health and farming.

The global figures bore that out. A WHO and UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme report released on 26 August 2025 found that about 2.1 billion people, one in four worldwide, still lacked safely managed drinking water in 2024, and that 106 million drank directly from untreated surface sources.

Bangladesh leans heavily on groundwater. According to Banglapedia, about 80 percent of people in rural Bangladesh depend on groundwater for drinking, and more than 95 percent of Dhaka City's supply comes from it; under 1995 conditions groundwater also provided 72 percent of irrigation coverage. Because water is unevenly distributed through the year, dry-season demand is met mainly from groundwater, and the water table is at its deepest in April and May. The encyclopedia notes that the most common hand tubewells cannot pump water once the level falls below 6 metres, and that in Dhaka the continuous lowering of the water level means ever higher production costs.

Arsenic is the gravest quality problem. The Department of Public Health Engineering (DPHE) first found arsenic in Bangladesh groundwater in 1993, by testing wells in Baragharia mauza of Nawabganj, Banglapedia records, and arsenic contamination of the country's groundwater is now considered the world's largest case of water pollution. The WHO's recommended limit for arsenic in drinking water is 10 micrograms per litre. In a fact sheet of December 2022 it estimated that 140 million people in at least 70 countries had been drinking water above that level, listed Bangladesh among the countries where inorganic arsenic is naturally present at high levels in groundwater, and warned that long-term exposure through drinking water and food can cause cancer and skin lesions.

Surface water fares no better. Banglapedia describes the country's surface water as extensively polluted by industrial and urban waste, agrochemicals, sewage and seawater intrusion, with water bodies widely used to dump untreated industrial waste, and cites the Buriganga, the river that flows past Dhaka, as a typical example of serious contamination. Along the coast, it notes, seawater intrudes a long way inland and makes river water saline.

The writer called climate change the environment's biggest challenge, with effects already clear: more intense heatwaves, irregular rainfall, more frequent floods and droughts, stronger cyclones, rising seas and threatened harvests. Bangladesh, the article said, is one of the world's most climate-vulnerable countries, where rising coastal salinity, river erosion, waterlogging and natural disasters were making the lives and livelihoods of farmers and ordinary people increasingly uncertain.

Farming depends entirely on a healthy environment, the writer argued, because it needs fertile soil, enough water, suitable temperatures and biodiversity. The article listed the problems farmers faced: excessive heat was cutting rice yields, flowers and fruit were dropping, new pests and diseases were appearing, irrigation was costing more and crops were being lost to drought and flood, putting food security at risk. There is no alternative to environment-friendly farming, the writer said, if safe food is to be ensured for future generations.

The World Bank's Country Climate and Development Report for Bangladesh, launched in Dhaka on 31 October 2022, put numbers to those risks. It said average tropical cyclones cost Bangladesh about 1 billion US dollars a year, that a severe flood could cut GDP by as much as 9 percent, and that by 2050 one-third of agricultural GDP may be lost to climate variability and extreme events, in a sector that represents around half of the country's employment. It projected that 13.3 million people may become internal migrants over the following 30 years because of climate impacts on agriculture, while noting that the country had reduced cyclone-related deaths 100-fold since 1970.

Research supports the writer's point about heat and rice. A study by scientists at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2004, analysed weather records from the institute's farm for 1979 to 2003 and irrigated field trials from 1992 to 2003. It found that rice grain yield fell by 10 percent for each 1°C rise in the growing-season minimum, or night-time, temperature in the dry season, while the maximum temperature had no significant effect.

Bees, butterflies, birds, fish and forest animals are all part of the environment, the writer said, and deforestation, excessive pesticide use and climate change were pushing many animals and plants towards extinction. The article singled out the decline of bees as a major concern, saying most of the world's food crops are pollinated by bees and that their loss would severely damage food production; conserving biodiversity, in the writer's words, means protecting not just animals but the food and future of human civilisation.

The most authoritative global assessment, by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), released in Kuala Lumpur on 26 February 2016, found that about 75 percent of the world's food crops rely at least partly on pollination by insects and other animals, and that crops directly affected by pollinators are worth between 235 billion and 577 billion US dollars a year. It reported that bee and butterfly species are often highly threatened in some regions, with more than 40 percent of invertebrate pollinator species facing local threats, and that about 16 percent of vertebrate pollinators are threatened globally, rising to 30 percent on islands. It named changes in land use, intensive farming and pesticide use, invasive species, diseases and pests, and climate change as the main drivers.

The UN General Assembly proclaimed 20 May as World Bee Day in 2017, and the first was observed in 2018; the FAO's page for the day notes that bees, pollinators and many other insects are declining in abundance and urges less use of harmful chemicals. Bangladesh itself is rich in plant life: Banglapedia records more than 6,000 plant species in the country, and notes that Bangladesh was among the more than 150 nations that signed the treaty to preserve biological diversity at the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development.

The article called plastic pollution a silent disaster and one of the biggest environmental problems of the day. Single-use plastic, the writer said, was polluting rivers, seas, farmland and cities, damaging the natural structure of soil, blocking the flow of water and seriously harming animals, while microplastics were entering food, water and even the human body and could become a bigger health risk in future.

Bangladesh had tried to act early. The country became the first in the world to ban thin plastic bags, in 2002, The Business Standard recalled on 10 November 2024, but enforcement was weak, polythene stayed cheap and alternatives were scarce, so its use rose again. The paper cited a World Bank estimate that annual per-capita plastic consumption in Dhaka was 22.25 kilograms, and its own earlier report that more than 2.5 crore (25 million) single-use polythene bags were thrown away in the capital every day. In the week before that article, during a renewed enforcement drive, the Department of Environment seized more than 12 tonnes of polythene and held 67 mobile court drives, fining 142 shops and establishments.

On the health question the science was still open. Reviewing the evidence in August 2019, the WHO concluded that microplastics in drinking water did not appear to pose a health risk at the levels then found, but stressed that data on the smallest, nano-sized particles were extremely limited, and called for more research and a crackdown on plastic pollution.

As a way forward the writer pointed to carbon smart agriculture, described as an idea becoming established worldwide, whose main aims are to cut carbon emissions, improve soil health, save water, raise production and build climate-resilient farming. Modern technology, the article said, had opened new possibilities: artificial intelligence in agriculture, smart soil analysis, weather forecasting systems, agricultural drones, precision farming and digital farm management, which help farmers make the right decision at the right time and reduce environmental damage.

The idea is close to what the World Bank and FAO call climate-smart agriculture, an integrated approach to managing landscapes that tackles food security and climate change together. The World Bank describes its aims as a triple win: higher productivity, producing more and better food without adding strain on natural resources; greater resilience to droughts, pests, diseases and other climate risks; and lower emissions, by cutting greenhouse gases from the food system, limiting deforestation for cropland and storing more carbon in plants and soils. By the Bank's account the global agrifood system emits one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions and is the leading source of methane.

Protecting the environment, the writer argued, is not only a job for the government or an organisation but every person's responsibility, and in today's world it is not opposed to development but a precondition of sustainable development. Without it, the article warned, food shortages would grow, water crises would deepen, health risks would rise, disaster losses would increase and biodiversity would be lost. The writer set out these actions:

• For individuals: use less unnecessary plastic, plant and care for trees, stop wasting water, live in an environment-friendly way and handle waste with care.
• In agriculture: encourage organic fertiliser, test soil health, follow balanced fertiliser management, use water-saving technology and expand carbon smart agriculture.
• At social and national level: conserve forests and plant more trees, expand renewable energy, control industrial pollution, extend environmental education and carry out climate-resilient development plans.

Healthy soil, clean air and pure water, the writer concluded, are the lifeline of human civilisation, yet careless human actions were steadily depleting them, and if nature's balance is destroyed the progress of civilisation will stop too. The earth, in the writer's words, is not our inheritance but a trust borrowed from future generations, and the article closed by asking readers to pledge to protect healthy soil, ensure clean air and conserve pure water.

Photo: Tanvir Rahat / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Sources: Jagonews24, United Nations, UNDP and ICIMOD (World Environment Day 2026), Alokito Bangladesh, World Meteorological Organization, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Banglapedia, World Health Organization (WHO), IQAir World Air Quality Report 2025, World Bank, WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme, International Rice Research Institute (PNAS, 2004), IPBES, The Business Standard