Forest Parks for Fighting Pollution
Cities in India need to shift to a paradigm shift in maintaining parks in neighbourhoods.
Most parks in big and small cities have tonnes of green spaces left in the form of parks. But these parks are insensitive and water guzzling in nature. The cost of maintaining a green cover by artificial watering is immense. I had conducted an experiment myself once when we tried greening a park of 3 acres for the entire summer using tap water. A quantum comparable to two tankers were required to keep the park green. Nevertheless, I learnt my lesson.
But most of our countrymen and women have not learnt any lesson. Year after year, we spend hundreds of millions of water for an artificial aesthetic sense of human fulfilment. These dead green zones are an opportunity in plain sight to recover the climate in our cities.
Already, some small cities across the world are emphasising the need to have forest parks. These parks are meant to provide a sense of the wild inside a city, in the lines of Cubbon Park in Bangalore and Central Park in New York.
However, in the Indian context, these parks must have immediate legislation passed to cover at least 50% of the park as soon as possible. Within a few years, the pollution levels in the vicinity will come down, within a few more years, the entire landscape will become comparatively more attractive as its immediate neighbouring areas and within a decade, these forest parks will be acknowledged as the Ultimate Warriors against Pollution. Question is, our planners refuse to adopt a landscape approach while working in cities and it will require supreme patience to convince them to act accordingly.
Most parks in big and small cities have tonnes of green spaces left in the form of parks. But these parks are insensitive and water guzzling in nature. The cost of maintaining a green cover by artificial watering is immense. I had conducted an experiment myself once when we tried greening a park of 3 acres for the entire summer using tap water. A quantum comparable to two tankers were required to keep the park green. Nevertheless, I learnt my lesson.
But most of our countrymen and women have not learnt any lesson. Year after year, we spend hundreds of millions of water for an artificial aesthetic sense of human fulfilment. These dead green zones are an opportunity in plain sight to recover the climate in our cities.
Already, some small cities across the world are emphasising the need to have forest parks. These parks are meant to provide a sense of the wild inside a city, in the lines of Cubbon Park in Bangalore and Central Park in New York.
However, in the Indian context, these parks must have immediate legislation passed to cover at least 50% of the park as soon as possible. Within a few years, the pollution levels in the vicinity will come down, within a few more years, the entire landscape will become comparatively more attractive as its immediate neighbouring areas and within a decade, these forest parks will be acknowledged as the Ultimate Warriors against Pollution. Question is, our planners refuse to adopt a landscape approach while working in cities and it will require supreme patience to convince them to act accordingly.
