The Hindu : Front Page : The dwindling green cover areas of Capital

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Feb 19, 2007
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The dwindling green cover areas of Capital

Bindu Shajan Perappadan

IT IS DELHI INDEED: Not all areas are as lucky as this stretch of Sunehri Bagh road which is considered to have one of the best green covers in the Capital. Photo: V.V. Krishnan

NEW DELHI: High population density areas such as East, North-East and West Delhi are also the Capital's least green areas.

According to Greening Delhi Action Plan (2006-07) of the Delhi Government's Forests and Wildlife Department, East Delhi has 02.94 sq. km of forest cover, North-East Delhi has 02.70 sq .km and West Delhi 05.06 sq. km.

The minimal forest cover in these areas robs the residents of clean air, reduced noise pollution levels and a robust groundwater table and leaves them susceptible to several pollution-related diseases and comparatively higher stress levels.

The report adds that though the Capital seems overwhelmingly green, the green cover is not uniformly distributed and areas such as New Delhi, South and South-West Delhi are greener than the rest of the districts.

"Need for residential plots are on the rise and the Master Plan for Delhi-2021 claims that we will have to make space to accommodate an additional 153-lakh population in Dwarka, Rohini Phase III, IV and V and Narela alone. We are eating into the provisions of lung spaces, recreational areas and green belts of the city. Also, vehicular pollution has increased 8 to 10 times in the past two decades and the thinning green cover leaves us with reduced noise buffer zones, adversely affecting the health of those exposed,'' says Gopal Krishna, environmentalist from the Centre for Social Medicine and Community Health at Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Mounting human and vehicular population and increased urbanisation has pushed up pollution and congestion levels in the city.

Understanding this problem, the Master Plan has re-stressed the need for creation of sustainable physical and social environment for improving the quality of life as one of the major objectives of any city plan. The report adds that the almost unprecedented scale and speed of urbanisation in Delhi has resulted in enormous pressure on the physical environment with a severe adverse impact in terms of pollution.

The vanishing greens have also hit the ground-water table. "Limited recharge of ground water due to decreased availability of permeable surface owing to urbanisation and the runoff getting diverted into the sewers has left the city unable even to harvest the potential of the annual rainwater,'' adds Mr. Krishna.

Experts claim that the environmentally stressed zones in Delhi should be identified and local area environment management should be prepared for such areas.

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