शनिवार, 29 सितंबर 2012
रविवार, 23 सितंबर 2012
जल भंडार खत्म होने की ¨चता (Dainik Jagran 18 Sep 2012)
The Hindu : Opinion / Lead : From verdant city to vertical slum
The government’s ill-conceived urban development schemes are threatening the future of Delhi
The Delhi Urban Arts Commission was constituted by an Act of Parliament in 1972 with the sole intention of acting as a supra urban body to guide the future development of Delhi. After 40 years of its existence, chaired by a galaxy of bureaucrats and, more recently, famous architects, it is still difficult to evaluate whether it has had any visible impact on the city as a whole.
Today, the Commission is extremely unhappy and feels helpless about the future of Delhi and that may well explain why its impact is difficult to evaluate. During the last month, the Commission has been presented three conceptual development schemes by the Central government that seem so preposterous that it has had no option but to comment on them adversely. In one of the proposals put forward by the government, the Commission described the proposal as “a vertical slum” as it would “destroy the emerging future urban design form and architectural character. It was the view of the Commission that such a development would set wrong precedents for the future.”
THREE SCHEMES
Three schemes together, clothed as “General Pool Residential Accommodation”, are meant to house almost 10,000 government employees in an area of over 165 acres in the middle of Delhi at separate locations in blocks that will rise to 14 floors. The investment required will certainly cross Rs. 4,000 crore.
The Commission is naturally restless because these schemes follow the directives of the latest version of the Delhi Master Plan 2021, which has called for tripling the current building volumes in many parts of Delhi. For instance, in one of the three proposals located in Sriniwaspuri, 1400 existing houses will be demolished and replaced by over 4,000 flats. While reviewing these proposals, the Commission has questioned how the entire Master Plan of Delhi has gone into the public realm without any approval from it. To add to the angst, the Minister of Urban Affairs has created further confusion by intervening in the status of the Plan which, incidentally, has been made disregarding the procedures laid down in the 74th Amendment of the Constitution which requires an entirely different procedure to be followed for the preparation of urban development plans. Adding to this, the Central government has rushed in to present clearly directed solutions for the future of Delhi.
At the end of the heated deliberations in the Commission about the merits of these schemes, one member commented: “What is the larger game being played behind these schemes?” It is a valid question to ask in a political environment that is being rocked by land and resource looting scandals. Large government schemes prefixed with the word “development” raise suspicion because of the lack of credibility in believing that social concerns are truly guiding the objectives of these schemes.
There is a new thrust by the government to change the character of Delhi from a garden city to a Gurgaon or Bombay model. The trouble probably began when the McKinsey Global Institute published its report on “India’s Urban Awakening: Building Inclusive Cities, Sustaining Economic Growth” in April 2010. Such reports are a regular part of McKinsey’s vision of the world of tomorrow that it prepares for various countries to guide its investors. This particular report has become a Bible for the government. McKinsey has pointed out that if its recommendations are followed, 70 per cent of India’s GDP could come from cities by 2030. Since McKinsey informs us that cities will provide 85 per cent of the tax revenue, the government has a strong motivation for speeding up the urbanisation process to allay fears that international investors have of the worst scenarios that McKinsey has projected “… the lack of serious policies to manage urbanization could jeopardise even 7.4 per cent growth rate … risking high unemployment”. To meet this juggernaut that is coming at us, McKinsey has computed that $2.2 trillion will be required and this would have to come from loans and “monetizing land assets, maximising property tax collections …” and by an enormous densification of metro and tier I cities which are to be surrounded by new satellite towns.
The three Central government housing schemes that have been presented to the Commission for conceptual approval (Kidwai Nagar, Srinwaspuri, Mohammed Park Ramakrishna Puram) provide the first evidence that the government has taken the McKinsey report as a guide to the future. The Commission, during its deliberations, wondered why there was this urgent need to provide almost 10,000 government employees with accommodation and whether some of it would go to others.
The Kidwai Nagar scheme, to house almost 5,000 employees, was presented to the Commission by the Indian agents of a British design consortium who prefaced their presentation with the words: “The scheme has already been approved by the Cabinet”. Going into the technical aspects of the scheme, the members asked for certain clarifications. For instance, how did the developers intend to save 80 per cent of over 2,000 existing trees on the site when the entire site, from one end to the other, was going to be excavated for two parking basements? The scheme had already been presented to the Minister for Urban Development for approval. The Commission felt betrayed at being last in the queue of approving authorities. It had no hesitation in rejecting the scheme, Cabinet and ministerial approval not withstanding. It commented on the Mohammed Park scheme: “The proposal was found unacceptable”.
Delhi is going to be transformed by these ill-conceived schemes being initiated by ministries and outsourced think tanks. If such schemes are allowed to come up, they will provide builders with a precedent to triple densities in Delhi. At this moment, development activities of builders have abated in Gurgaon because of the recession and acute water crisis. They have now turned their eyes to Delhi and are gnawing at its gates, fully secure in the knowledge that the government will back them, as it did when they overbuilt and dried out Gurgaon’s water supply. What nobody mentions loudly enough is that Delhi is already water starved. The Chief Minister is at her wits’ end trying to cope with the migration of half a million people a year who settle down in Delhi as it continues to dry up.
QUESTIONABLE POLICIES
The questionable urbanisation policies for Delhi clearly have the approval of the Planning Commission whose eyes are fixed firmly on models of development that are advocated by international financial and loan institutions which do not hesitate to showcase the success of China in monetising Commons resources. The urbanisation patterns that are emerging in our cities and industrial corridors (McKinsey has recommended 19 like the Delhi- Mumbai one) are serious causes for concern. If India is being prepared for the role of service provider to the world while China becomes the manufacturing hub, we are in for some very tumultuous times. There are other balanced ways to develop and urbanise but these directions will be difficult to pursue with the existing experts in the Planning Commission and the absence of a public debate on where we want to be in 2030. China has convened over a hundred meetings with experts about its future direction. Should we be content with outsourced solutions for our future while watching the emasculation of the Delhi Urban Arts Commission?
(Romi Khosla is an architect and advisor to the Delhi Urban Arts Commission.)
Costs that Coalgate brushes around (The Hindu- 18 Sep 12)
PANKAJ SEKHSARIA
NOT COUNTED: Forests will be ripped apart, watersheds destroyed, rivers and streams poisoned and the livelihoods and cultures of the forest communities sacrificed at the altar of development.
In the noise over the irregularities in allocation of natural resources, the huge environmental and related costs of exploiting these have been forgotten
How much really is Rs.1.86 lakh crore? This is the loss the nation has reportedly incurred because of the corruption in the allocation of coals blocks in different parts of the country. This is the figure at the centre of a huge churning that is taking place in the political establishment and in the media. There is an outrage at what looks like a loot of unprecedented proportions.
Even as political parties slug it out, as skeletons keep tumbling out of corporate cupboards, as the electronic media finds juicy bits to occupy airtime and many column inches of newspaper space get consumed by Coalgate, there is a more fundamental question that has just not been asked — what is it really that we are losing? The Rs.1.86 lakh crore is an evaluation of one facet, in one metric; it’s the manifestation of only one world view — unitary, monetary, unidimensional. It is a computation of the loss in Indian National Rupees that has been incurred to the national treasury because a whole set of people (almost) successfully ducked the system. It is the alleged illegality, the cheating of the system where the real money for the coal was not paid.
GREENPEACE REPORT
But what if we assume for a moment that the game would be played by the book, that there would be competitive bidding, that the “correct” price would be paid? The state would earn the Rs.1.86 lakh crore but would anything else change? To answer that question, even if as a partial counterpoint, one has to look at Greenpeace India’s most recent report “How coal mining is thrashing tigerland” available at (http://www.greenpeace.org/india/en/publications/How-coal-mining-is-trashing-tigerland/). It’s an irony that the report was released just about the time that Coalgate was breaking upon us.
Over 1.1 million hectares of forest, mostly dense, is at risk from coal mining in just 13 coalfields in central India that the report analyses; there are 40 other coalfields which still remain to be evaluated. Almost all these coalfields, the report notes, overlap with endangered species habitat — over 1,85,000 ha. are inhabited by the tiger, over 2,70,000 ha. are leopard habitat and over 55,000 ha. are roamed by elephants. These forests are not just home to a diverse range of flora and fauna; they are the carbon sinks that we want to exploit and market in international fora; and these are the lands that are home to thousands of adivasi communities who have lived here for generations. The Rs.1.86 lakh crore is only the notional value of a single resource that lies buried deep; it does not include the value of anything else even if such a valuation was indeed possible.
The mining, when and where it will happen or where it has already happened, cares neither for the estimated economic losses nor the legality. The way the land is scarred bears no suggestion of who made that money finally. The coal is the same, the processes are the same and the outcomes are same. Forests will be ripped apart, watersheds will be destroyed, rivers and streams poisoned, livelihoods and cultures of the adivasi communities sacrificed at the altar of development. It doesn’t matter that these people bear the lightest footprint on the planet in these times of a climate change crisis and neither will it matter that many of these forests are adjacent to tiger reserves or are part of corridors linking one tiger and elephant habitat to another.The question of electricity and power that the country needs, one would argue, is at the heart of all this. If one goes by estimates of the Planning Commission, a GDP growth of eight to nine per cent will need between 1,475 and 1,659 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) of coal for electricity generation in two decades from now. This is more than twice India’s current coal consumption of approximately 650 mtpa and it is clear how the dice will roll. And we are not even talking about the other millions of tons of iron ore, bauxite, limestone and uranium. What we have today is an “there is no alternative” (TINA) chorus. We need the growth, there is no alternative; we need the electricity, there is no alternative; so we need the coal, there is no alternative. What we haven’t realised yet is that today’s Coalgate is built into this mindless “there is no alternative” narrative. We also haven’t realised that the Rs.1.86 lakh crore that has had all of us so worked up, is only a fraction of the cost that we will be forced to pay.
Coalgate could be an eye-opener, but only if we understood the real value.
(Pankaj Sekhsaria is editor of the Protected Area Update, a bimonthly newsletter on wildlife and conservation published by Kalpavriksh. Email:psekhsaria@gmail.com)
“A city the earth needs” (The Hindu- 15 Sep 2012)
Wetland wonderland (The Hindu- 23 Sep 2012)
N. SHIVA KUMAR
Marine wealth: A colourful sea anemone. Photos: N. Shiva Kumar
Aerial roots: Helps mangrove trees to breathe despite high tides.
Crustaceans' delight: A wide variety of crabs are found in mangrove forests.
Tourist potential: Mangrove saplings planted on Gujarat coast.
Subjected to plunder and deforestation for years, people are finally waking up to the role mangrove forests play in containing erosion, de-polluting air and maintaining a healthy marine ecology
Just as the Olympics are conducted once in four years, environmentalists across the globe also hold their mega meeting once in four years. While the more dramatic Olympics grab headlines, the ‘green guys’ do not get any publicity on that scale, even though the proceedings on natural science directly impacts all living creatures, including mankind. This year, the World Conservation Congress was held in Korea in the quest to use nature for resolving the growing list of economic and social issues. Conducted by IUCN — International Union for Conservation of Nature, from September 1 to 15, its agenda was to find pragmatic solutions to environmental and developmental challenges in the world.
One of the major decisions taken in the congress was to prepare the Red List of Ecosystems that will harmonise the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and other IUCN knowledge products. When used together, ecosystem and species red lists will provide the most informative indicator of the status of biological diversity at national and global levels. Also in focus are the sensitive mangrove ecosystems which are unique but underrated and one of the least considered of all the ecologically niches until the world shattering tsunamis of 2004 and 2011 happened. Thankfully, mangroves are now credited for taming the tides against tempests and safeguarding valuable wildlife and sensitive shorelines.
Mangroves are unique jungles and one of the most productive wetlands on earth. Yet, these coastal tropical forests are among the most threatened habitats. They may be disappearing faster than tropical rainforests, and so far, with little public notice.
Lavishly growing in the inter-tidal areas and river mouths between land and sea, mangroves provide critical habitat for a diverse marine and terrestrial flora and fauna. Healthy mangrove forests are key to a healthy marine ecology and wildlife that thrives in this breathtaking wonderland. Endowed with 7517 km long coastline, the Indian subcontinent is rich in mangrove forests, but it is being ruthlessly plundered.
However, management of mangroves in India is also slowly picking up, especially in the west coast, on the east coast and Andaman and Nicobar Islands. According to the government in 1987, India lost 40 per cent of its mangrove area in the last century. Rapid industrialisation, pollution and increasing population has resulted in degradation of mangroves. Even though legal protection exists to protect this ecosystem under the Coastal Regulation Zone Notification, are the people actually aware of this?
Very few citizens are responsive to mangrove forests and even fewer have ever seen them. Even those who have seen them will not appreciate their splendour at face value, until the nuances are explained.
On a visit to Andaman Islands, just before the 2004 tsunami, mangroves skirted the islands but nobody spoke of the greenery. We were only told of the beautiful beaches and blue lagoons. Nevertheless, on my more recent visit to Sundarbans in West Bengal, the forest that lies snugly in the vast delta on the Bay of Bengal, there seems to be more respect for this remarkable jungle of undergrowth. Formed by the confluence of many rivers, the Sundarbans is often flooded with a mixture of freshwater and seawater. The interplay of low tide and high tide is one of the miracles of mangroves where tiny islands are created everyday and vanish the next day. It is rated as the most dynamic and dramatic landscape on earth.
The Sundarbans mangrove covers 10,000 sq km of which about 6,000 sq km is in Bangladesh and rest in India. Due to its vital wealth and statistics, it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997.
This exceptional water world is an amalgamation of creeks, canals and serpentine rivers of varying width from a few meters to several km.
Travelling in a watercraft for two full days from sun up to sundown and gazing at the amazing maze of jungles made me dizzy. The wealth of vegetation was so astounding, that even my two decades of nature watching did not help me recognise even a single species of plant. I was merrily shooting to capture flora and fauna specially adapted to this unique landscape as visual documentary.
Hemant Karkhanis of Godrej Marine Ecology Centre from Bombay says that mangroves not only act as buffer zones between the land and sea but also protect the golden sands from constant erosion.
They are perfect breeding and nursery grounds for a variety of marine animals, good source of timber, fuel and fodder. They also purify the water by absorbing impurities and help us to breathe cleaner air by absorbing the pollutants in the air. In the future, they are a potential source for recreation and tourism.
जानलेवा हो सकता है अदरक
जागरण संवाददाता, बाहरी दिल्ली : स्वास्थ्य के लिए लाभकारी अदरक खरीदने से पहले सचेत हो जाइए। राजधानी में धड़ल्ले से अदरक की तेजाब से धुलाई हो रही है। ऐसा अदरक की चमक बरकरार रखने के लिए किया जा रहा है, लेकिन यह लोगों के लिए मौत की वजह बन सकती है। स्वास्थ्य विशेषज्ञ का मानना है कि तेजाब से अदरक को धोने से न केवल उसका औषधीय गुण कम होता है, बल्कि इसका लंबे समय तक सेवन से कई जानलेवा बीमारियां होने का भी खतरा रहता है। इस मुद्दे को लेकर 17 सितंबर को नगर निगम उत्तरी सदन में हुई बैठक में उठाए गए सवाल पर निगम आयुक्त पी के गुप्ता ने जांच के आदेश भी दिए थे, लेकिन राजधानी में यह कार्य बदस्तूर जारी है। अधिकारी की नाक के नीचे चल रहा है अवैध धंधा : आजादपुर मंडी के आसपास केइलाके में अदरक में चमक पैदा करने के लिए तेजाब से धोने का धंधा तो सालों से चल ही रहा है, इसके अलावा यह खेल आजादपुर मंडी कृषि उत्पाद विपणन कमेटी (एपीएमसी) परिसर में भी चल रहा है, लेकिन इसके आला अधिकारी को इसकी भनक तक नहीं है। एपीएमसी के चेयरमैन राजेंद्र शर्मा ने बताया कि उन्हें इस बात की जानकारी नहीं है, लेकिन उन्होंने भरोसा दिलाया कि अगर ऐसा है तो तत्काल इसपर रोक लगाई जाएगी और फलों व सब्जियों की धुलाई की निगरानी के लिए अधिकारियों को नियुक्त किया जाएगा। जागरण टीम ने भी लिया जायजा : दैनिक जागरण टीम ने बृहस्पतिवार को सराय पीपल थला, भड़ौला गांव व यहां की झुग्गियों में चल रहे इस गैर कानूनी धंधे का जायजा लिया और इसे अपने कैमरे में कैद किया। इन इलाकों की तंग गलियों में दो से ढ़ाई हजार रुपये में झुग्गियों व मकानों को किराए पर लेकर इस धंधे को अंजाम दिया जा रहा है। अप्रवासी मजदूरों द्वारा पानी में तेजाब मिलाकर अदरक धोते पाया गया। इन जगहों पर तेजाब की भरी व खाली बोतलें भी पाई गई। अदरक को मंडी से ढेले व टैंपों से ले जाया जाता है। कहीं-कहीं तो बडे़ पैमाने पर यह काम चल रहा है और चालीस से पचास बोरियां धुलाई के लिए रखीं गई हैं। कई मकान व झुग्गियां अंदर से बंद थी। काफी कोशिश के बाद भी उसके अंदर मौजूद व्यक्ति दरवाजा खोलने को राजी नहीं हुआ। दिल्ली में भारी खपत है अदरक की : आजादपुर मंडी में पश्चिम बंगाल व दक्षिण भारत से रोजाना औसतन 12 से 15 टन अदरक की आवक है। किसान मिट्टी युक्त अदरक को लेकर मंडी में पहुंचते हैं, जहां थोक कारोबारियों को बेच दिया जाता है। अब यहां के कारोबारियों द्वारा अदरक की धुलाई के बाद इसे खुदरा दुकानदारों को बेचा जाता है, लेकिन कम समय में धुलाई होने व चमक पैदा करने के लिए तेजाब का प्रयोग किया जाता है। दिल्ली खाद्य सुरक्षा आयुक्त के. जे. वर्मन ने कहा कि उनका विभाग इस मामले की जांच कराएगा। यदि इस प्रकार की गतिविधि हो रही है, तो निश्चित तौर पर इसमें शामिल लोगों के खिलाफ कड़ी कार्रवाई की जाएगी। उन्होंने कहा कि वे मंडियों से जुड़े अधिकारियों से भी कहेंगे कि इस मामले को गंभीरता से लें और ऐसे किसी भी धंधे को रोकने के लिए तत्काल कदम उठाएं।
Beware the loss of biodiversity (The Hindu 23 Sep. 2012)
Prof. P. J. Sanjeeva Raj
Biodiversity or biological diversity is the variety or richness of ecosystems, species composition therein, and their genetic diversity too. Professor Edward O. Wilson, Harvard visionary of biodiversity, observes that the current rate of biodiversity loss is perhaps the highest since the loss of dinosaurs about 65 million years ago during the Mesozoic era, when humans had not appeared.
He regrets that if such indiscriminate annihilation of all biodiversity from the face of the earth happens for anthropogenic reasons, as has been seen now, it is sure to force humanity into an emotional shock and trauma of loneliness and helplessness on this planet. He believes that the current wave of biodiversity loss is sure to lead us into an age that may be appropriately called the “Eremozoic Era, the Age of Loneliness.” Loss of biodiversity is a much greater threat to human survival than even climate change. Both could act, synergistically too, to escalate human extinction faster.
Biodiversity is so indispensable for human survival that the United Nations General Assembly has designated the decade 2011- 2020 as the ‘Biodiversity Decade’ with the chief objective of enabling humans to live peaceably or harmoniously with nature and its biodiversity. We should be happy that during October 1-19, 2012, XI Conference of Parties (CoP-11), a global mega event on biodiversity, is taking place in Hyderabad, when delegates from 193 party countries are expected to meet. They will review the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which was originally introduced at the Earth Summit or the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Riode Janeiro in 1992. The Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) is the nodal agency for CoP-11. Today, India is one of the 17 mega-diverse (richest biodiversity) countries.
Biodiversity provides all basic needs for our healthy survival — oxygen, food, medicines, fibre, fuel, energy, fertilizers, fodder and waste-disposal, etc. Fast vanishing honeybees, dragonflies, bats, frogs, house sparrows, filter (suspension)-feeder oysters and all keystone species are causing great economic loss as well as posing an imminent threat to human peace and survival. The three-fold biodiversity mission before us is to inventorise the existing biodiversity, conserve it, and, above all, equitably share the sustainable benefits out of it.
Unique role
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