 The Fall of a Tree
Across urban India, municipal corporators, bureaucrats and politicians vie with each other for an inviting slice of the corruption cake offered by builders and contractors for permission to cut trees and usurp open spaces. Bittu Sahgal, Editor, Sanctuary magazine, asks readers across urban India to place a greater value on their vanishing green heritage.
A 100 years before Sir Vikar-ul-Umra, Prime Minister of Hyderabad and member of the famous Paigah family, commissioned an Italian architect to build Hyderabad's opulent 200-room Falaknuma Palace in the 1880s, a healthy banyan tree had already established its reign over a parcel of land in nearby Begumpet.
When the sixth Nizam of Hyderabad, Mir Mahbub Ali Khan, openly admired the completed Falaknuma Palace in 1895, in an act of largesse characteristic of the day, Vikar-ul-Umra gifted it to the Nizam. But Vikar-ul-Umra loved palaces. So, he began building himself another one - right next to Bengumpet's now venerable banyan tree.
The two-storey structure that emerged became the now-famous Paigah Palace or Devdi Iqbal-ud-Daula, which should interest us less for its elegant style, more for its farsighted climate-friendly architecture. Its two-foot-thick walls, ventilation panels and orientation that accentuated natural light and keep occupants warm in winter, cool in summer. Of course the 150 acre woodland surrounding the palace offered occupants a micro climate long lost to Hyderabad.
And what of Paigah's banyan tree? It just died.
Modern day architects and ignorant city planners allowed a US$ 5.5 million consular project to cut down the venerable 200-year-old banyan tree (Ficus bengalensis) that Vikar-ul-Umra had preserved a century ago. The city was paid US$ 1.25 as compensation/permission fee
But things have changed not just in Hyderabad. The rot has spread across India.
In Bangalore a local NGO Hasiru Usiru calculates that over 60,000 trees to be felled to widen 90 roads along a 145 km length. Citizens who needed no fans, now want airconditioners.
In Chennai trees are cut in the dead of night and citizens are so disheartened that they have begun to believe (mistakenly) that it is pointless to complain. With its vanishing green cover Chennai is also suffering acute water shortages.
In Kolkata the Alipore Met Office records that June temperatures are over 5º celsius above normal. Activists draw a direct correlation between unbearable city heat and the loss of thousands of old trees along Syed Amir Ali Avenue, Gariahat Road, Park Circus CIT Road, Beliaghata CIT Road, Manicktala Main Road and Narkeldanga Main Road, stretches of APC Road, AJC Bose Road and Rashbehari Avenue.
You could multiply these stories many times over for every single Indian city, where carbon absorbing, climate moderating plants and earth have given way to cement and concrete that heats up cities. The "but its only a tree" brigade should know that every leaf of every tree cut down once served as an organic air conditioner through a process called transpiration that causes leaves to be cooler than the surrounding air in summer. Every tree also buffers sound pollution. And every leaf helps asthmatics, the very young and the elderly to cope by collecting dust and suspended particulate matter.
Want a better life in the city? Then show planners how trees reduce building energy use by moderating climate. Point out that property values can be 5 to 20 per cent higher prices. Look around your city. Trees promote social interactions, support small shops, allow people a quiet moments of respite from urban life.
Remember, when a tree falls, your living standard falls with it.
|
What can you do to save your city?
