DHAKA — On June 28, as the afternoon sun beat down on Bangladesh capital Dhaka’s sprawling Tejgaon neighborhood, Samiha Begum gathered her two school-aged children and headed for the shade of Hatirjheel Lake. Their narrow one-room home in a nearby slum had become unbearable. She said, “The room starts heating up as soon as the sun rises. Even if it rains in the morning, the heat becomes like a boiler once the sun comes out. My children cannot stay inside after returning from school. Thus, I come to the lakeside and take the trees’ shade. Here, the air is cooler than in my house.” Like Samiha Begum, for millions of informal workers across Bangladesh’s capital, extreme heat is no longer merely a seasonal discomfort. It is becoming a growing threat to health, livelihoods and survival. Samiha Begum works as a cook in a family home near her slum. A new study by People’s Courage International (PCI) on informal workers in South and Southeast Asia found that 74% of surveyed migrants in Dhaka reported being negatively affected by increasing temperatures, making heat one of the city’s most significant climate threats. The study also found that 100% of surveyed migrants in Dhaka reported being affected by extreme weather events, highlighting the growing vulnerability of low-income urban residents. Researchers analyzed the reality of informal workers in five cities: Dhaka, Delhi, Jakarta, Kathmandu and Quezon City and “how the precarity of their lives and livelihoods is being dangerously intensified due to heat.” Dhaka recorded…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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