JOIN USThe lost shade
Summer has hit the City and the blistering heat has been too much to handle. Over the last few months, the temperature has shot up and one of the reasons for this is the City’s dwindling green cover. In the last few years, urbanisation has spread rapidly across the City and today, Bengaluru has turned into a concrete jungle with little green cover to boast of.
Says Srinivas, Deputy Executive Director, Indian Green Building Council, “During summers, the temperature here is similar to that of Hyderabad. The problem is that the City has grown horizontally and not vertically,” he says. According to him, urban landscaping is the need of the hour. “It has to be embraced by the government and private companies.
Every building company should ensure that whatever project it does, 30 per cent should include landscaping. Though this may be a small change, it will reduce the micro climate or temperature of the City,” he adds. Srinivas also feels rewards must be given to those who actively take part in the green initiative.
One such initiative in the City is ‘Neralu’, the tree festival which had its second edition this year. “We are a group of like-minded people who get together to create awareness about the importance of trees among people,” says Poornima, one of the organisers.
Tree walks and various
other workshops are an essential part of the festival. “We want to engage people in as many ways as possible and see that at least the existing green cover is preserved,” she adds.
Many City-based youngsters like Arpith and Gautham, who are both engineering students, keep taking part in initiatives like these. “The trees are being cut to make way for buildings,” says Arpith while Gautham adds, “The Metro construction has rapidly brought down the green cover of the City especially in areas like Jayanagar.”
Renowned environmentalist and filmmaker Suresh Heblikar feels that the authorities should focus as much on greenery as development. “They are building beautiful flyovers and footpaths and streamlining the roads.
But they are also causing inconvenience to those who like to walk or cycle,” he laments.
“The green cover has been vanishing at a faster rate in the last few years. The depletion started in the last decade when the villages on the outer parts, which used to be lung spaces, were turned into urban entities. Areas like JP Nagar and HSR Layout used to be villages with beautiful orchards which have now become posh localities,” he adds.
“Even the lakes of City used to be connected and that’s why the City never got flooded during the rains. The authorities should have made a canal system and we could have had a wonderful green and blue belt,” he says. Suresh further notes that green cover is very important especially in a City like Bengaluru which has an “undulated landscape”, full of hills and valley”.
“But we can still save the existing greenery by turning the 1000 plus parks that we have into tree parks. Trees should also be planted on the outskirts of the City in areas like Nelamangala and Kanankapura. Even the highways need to have a lot more trees and we should concentrate on planting more native species,” he sums up.