Shobha Surin - Question of Cities

Moving towards sustainable goals brick by brick

The green building movement has been gaining momentum in India with governments doling out incentives. A recent report ranks India third in the world for certified green buildings. However, outdated bye-laws of urban local bodies and the lack of awareness…

How urban plans can, and must, value trees

Urban development plans and master plans have traditionally seen trees as impediments to ‘development’, rarely acknowledging them as natural wealth of cities and hardly making provisions to protect and preserve them. This will no longer work in the time of…

Move the air pollution needle to smaller and neglected cities

Conversations and policies on air pollution are mostly centred on Delhi and Mumbai but other cities and towns have been facing toxic air too. These are, at best, footnotes in national conversations on air pollution. Authorities here go in for…

‘Developing countries are struggling to get climate-related finance’

As the global powers work out the finance needed to address devastating climate change impacts in the developing world, for which the developed world is largely responsible, the focus has to be within India too. What kind of resources are…

‘Goa has successful ecological movements but we should not have to keep doing this’

From a languid destination for vacations, Goa has turned into a hotspot for tourism projects, real estate development, and large investments. Village lands, khazan lands, lush forests, and a natural water network have come under intense pressure from massive development…

Eco-friendly festivals are still a dream

Most festivals have a long way to go to become genuinely sustainable even as greenwashing -- claiming false or exaggerated environmental benefits -- takes hold. Knee-jerk reactions such as banning or restricting firecrackers only days before Diwali hardly help. Purposeful…

Zero-fare is women’s ticket to freedom, work, and study

After Delhi rolled out its zero-ticket ride for women in 2019, Punjab, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Telangana followed. Early reports suggest that it has dramatically increased women’s use of buses, and how and why they commute. It has led to…

‘Keep environmental justice at the core, not mere environmentalism’

India’s economic growth model, which is based on passing costs to the poor and marginalised while the benefits are for another class of people, makes environmental justice urgent. Environmental issues are seen as problems to be solved with technological interventions,…

We, the people, must fight to save our cities and ourselves

Governments and authorities are the custodians of our ecology but, in the past few years, people have resisted and protested actions of their governments to save trees, forests, hills, rivers, creeks, seafronts, wetlands and more. While the prevailing urban development…

‘Resistance is needed for government to perform its basic duties’

Eminent environmentalist Ravi Chopra resigned from the Supreme Court-appointed high-powered committee to supervise the Char Dham road-widening project in 2022 as an act of protest. His advice to limit the road width in the fragile Himalayan terrain had been overruled.…