Environment

In the early hours of October 23rd, nearly a hundred trees and shrubs were mowed down at Kotturpuram Tree Park (KTP) - ostensibly a "mistake" by a misinformed earthmover operator, who could not have been working there without instructions from the Public Works Department (PWD).  Tree lovers in the city and beyond were horrified and heartbroken. We wrote an anguished piece on the state of trees in Chennai, many other publications also covered the "accident",  and even the Madras High Court took suo moto cognisance of the incident. Shaken by the hullabaloo, PWD officials quickly admitted to the mistake and assured…

Over 56% of the city's transplanted trees in Mumbai failed to survive their shifting, revealed a Bombay High Court-appointed fact finding committee, entrusted to determine the status of such trees. The court-appointed committee inspected about 1483 fully grown trees transplanted since 2017, of which 824 trees were found to be either dead or on the verge of dying. The report presented in court found inadequate tree care and lack of scientific transplanting methods to be the root cause of the problem.  "The proportion of dead trees keeps on rising. In January 2018, 478 trees (42%) were found dead. The number rose…

The air quality in Chennai has deteriorated to alarming levels. An hourly data feed from Central Pollution Control Board's app - Sameer - shows that as of Nov 7th, 2:37 PM, the Air Quality Index (AQI) level in Velachery area stood at 271 (as compared to Delhi which is at 282 at the same time). The Weather Channel AQI data for the same time showed Chennai AQI as 217. While the calculation to arrive at AQI may differ, but one thing is clear from the findings across all these reports. The air is not healthy for breathing. Chennai's natural air…

As rapidly-expanding Guwahati, northeast India’s largest metropolis, gears up to clean its air under the National Clean Air Policy (NCAP), a study suggests a cocktail of natural and man-made pollutants wafting through the air is tinkering with the city’s rainwater quality. Guwahati in Assam is among the 122 ‘non-attainment’ cities identified for implementing mitigation actions under the national policy, which means it does not meet the National Ambient Air Quality Standards. Researchers said pinpointing critical sources of air pollution and their contributions to the problem are essential to crafting effective city and region-specific air pollution control plans. Connecting the dots between the origin of…

“The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see.” This quote from Russian-American author and philosopher Ayn Rand’s bestseller, The Fountainhead, aptly describes everything that happened at Rabindra Sarovar since early morning on November 2nd well into the following day, as an order from the country’s green court -- the National Green Tribunal (NGT) – was brazenly flouted to allow the conduct of Chhat Puja in the Sarovar premises. An earlier story on Citizen Matters had detailed all the precautions and steps that had been taken to protect the national lake from toxic…

Rapid urbanisation in India has claimed one major casualty – destruction of existing green cover in cities to make way for development and other projects. But with the growing realisation that a good quality of life means not just conserving, but also adding to the city’s green cover, and citizens pushing for the same, urban authorities in Ahmedabad, as in some other cities, are experimenting with ways of creating small green areas in an ever-expanding concrete urban landscape. One method, much touted of late, is that of Miyawaki forests. Developed by Japanese botanist and plant ecologist Akira Miyawaki, and named…

Following a strict order from the National Green Tribunal (NGT), the Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority (KMDA), custodian of the Rabindra Sarovar Lake in Kolkata has taken several steps to ensure that Chhat Puja is not held in the lake premises this year and its biodiversity is protected. As a result, for the second time in the history of its existence, Rabindra Sarovar will remain closed on November 2 and will open on November 3 after 11 AM. The only other time that the lake was completely closed down was during the Aila Storm in 2009. Spread over 192 acres, Rabindra…

The High Court’s recent decision to give ‘itself’ a seven-storey annexe building in Cubbon Park has not gone down well with heritage and environment activists in the city. In an online petition on Change.org, the activists have pleaded to the High Court to revisit its decision and to conserve the lung space of Bengalureans. The petition, started two days ago, has already garnered over 4300 signatures. In a writ petition filed in 2014, High Court Registrar Rajendra Badamikar had sought the court's permission to demolish the Old Election Commissioner's Office in the park, and to build an annexe to the…

The story of Ennore is neither new nor untold. However, there is a need to retell it, only because justice seems to be slipping further and further away. The dual onslaught of unplanned industrialisation and deforestation has taken away an important constitutional right from Ennore residents -- the right to life.  Both public and private sector industries have been drastically exploiting the natural resources of Ennore since 1993. Who suffers the consequences? The residents in eight villages of Ennore, for whom clean air and unpolluted water has become an unattainable luxury.  As the locality suffers the consequences of industrialisation in…

The festive season is all about lights, delicious savories, fun and frolic with family and are much awaited by the people across the country . But amidst the sight and sounds, an unaccounted number of birds and animals scamper. Similar to a human infant or elderly person, they too are unsettled by the wild display of fireworks and shrill or explosive sounds. The helpless animals are distraught in the face of the overall increase of heat in the surroundings, the chemical fumes entering their bodily system and the general melee all around. As though all this was not sufficient cause…