Ecology - Question of Cities

Urgent call: A new imagination of cities with abundant trees

Vast acres of tree covers and forests are being ruthlessly hacked for infrastructure projects and urban development even as extreme heat rises in cities. Research shows that the mean urban temperatures in India’s cities may rise by an additional 45…

‘What’s the strategic component in Great Nicobar? The logic is entirely financial’

The dense forest of 130 square kilometres in the Great Nicobar, an area equivalent to 38 percent of Mumbai, faces total erasure by a Rs 92,000-crore mega development project of a transshipment terminal, port and airport. “We are signing off…

Call it a forest or not, Dwarka matters beyond the definition

Between the Dwarka forest and the road outside, there was a staggering difference of 17 to 21 degrees Celsius on the thermal camera, underscoring the need for trees. But Dwarka was not legally tagged a forest and did not appear…

India’s war on trees

How many hundreds or thousands of trees have been chopped down across India, where has the tree-felling been, and what would the destruction look like on a map? Researching, collating and analysing the answers to these and related questions led…

Do not touch our trees: Citizens echo across cities

From Pune to Hyderabad, citizens are protesting large-scale tree cutting linked to roads, metros, flyovers, mining and real estate projects despite worsening urban heat. In Pune, activists say decades of infrastructure-led concretisation have devastated tree cover, even as the city…

Paris shows the cool way to prioritise nature over concrete

Paris went from grey car-centric to green and tree-filled, planting nearly 1,00,000 trees and creating 531 gardens, and two urban forests with Mayor Anne Hidalgo leading the transformation. To make the city more liveable and breathable, and to reduce excessive…

Economies of exhaustion: Women, work, and
climate action

Nearly 168 million women do informal work in India’s cities as street vendors, domestic workers, construction labourers, home-based workers, waste pickers, but most have no contracts or safety nets. They carry an unequal burden, often higher than that of men…

‘Riverfront development is the murder of rivers, turning rivers into drains.’

“The Aravari taught me to flow like water,” says Dr Rajendra Singh, renowned water conservationist, in this interview, explaining how the work of turning it perennial influenced his life’s work and methods. Riverfront development, now unfolding across India’s cities, is…

Pune riverfront work narrows the Mula-Mutha, slashes
green to grey

The network of rivers in Pune have created and sustained life; their banks, riparian zones, and channels (not canals) have been functional spaces for humans and flora-fauna, nurturing an eternal ecological truth. The riverfront development will turn it from a…

Musi riverfront project for real estate, sidelines people
and river

Only the first phase of the Musi riverfront development project in Hyderabad will be around Rs 7,000 crore; the total cost is estimated from Rs 56,000 crore to allegedly Rs 1.5 lakh crore—the most expensive riverfront work in India. Several…