Protecting peri-urban areas key to saving Bengaluru, says study

For a city that is fast losing its greenery and natural landscape, Bengaluru needs to protect its peri-urban areas for a sustainable future, researchers from three universities have warned, stressing the need for a policy for the transition zones.

The work on the ‘Structure and composition of field margin vegetation in the rural-urban interface of Bengaluru’ was a collaborative effort between the Institute of Social and Economic Change, Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology and Universität Kassel, Germany.

The researchers studied 1.4 lakh-hectares in Doddaballapur where they found that the built-up area has increased from 7.10% in 1991 to 19.06% in 2018. They noted that it was high time to monitor the increased built-up area in former suburban towns such as Yelahanka, Hesaraghatta, Hoskote and Attibele.

The transition zones between rural and urban areas, the researchers said, might serve as repositories of biodiversity, more specifically of indigenous species that are not available in the wild. The study found 75 species of flora in peri-urban areas of Bengaluru (like Yelahanka) as opposed to 48 species in the rural zone.

Sunil Nautiyal, the lead researcher and professor at the Centre for Ecological Economics and Natural Resources at ISEC, said urgent changes in the policy were needed to protect the transition zones. “Transition zones act as a big buffer to protect the core urban areas. They will play a major role in Bengaluru’s environment, from its weather to the growing human-animal conflict. It is important to protect and conserve them,” he said.

The study results also showed that peri-urban area had rich biodiversity. “The rural zone has 48 species, whereas the highly dynamic peri-urban area, which is the transition zone, contains 75 species,” the researchers said, citing the shift from subsistence farming to commercial farming.

Nautiyal said monitoring was required to ensure that biodiversity was continued in those areas. He said various government agencies like BDA, BMRDA and BBMP must draw a master plan that would take into consideration the role of the transition zones.

“A lot of work is done to protect rural and urban local systems, but there is no policy on transition zones. The policymakers should decide whether the transition zone is a 10-km or 20-km area surrounding the city and draw up plans to protect its landscape, starting with regulations on the change of land use."