BackOpinion | Save the maximum city while there is still time
The ecological balance of Mumbai has been worsening for decades. If even more concrete now gets to encroach upon the city’s Aarey forest belt, the consequences could be disastrous
PremiumFew cities get waterlogged as routinely as Mumbai, a metropolis that needs to act quickly to save its green cover, especially the forest area around Aarey Milk Colony. Broadly outlined, the problem is not new. It has been well identified. Prakash Javadekar, Union minister for environment, forest and climate change, once said that the greatest failure “after independence is in our urban and town and country planning". His observation was accurate, but little has been done to rectify that. Among the hardest hit is India’s financial capital, home to over 18.4 million people and a large number of businesses. If rainwater failing to get drained away through natural means is one consequence of shrinking green patches, rising pollution is another. With particulate matter levels having risen to as high as 104 micrograms per cubic metre, Mumbai has become the world’s fourth most polluted mega city. If developmental projects in the Aarey belt go ahead as planned, the ecological imbalance could worsen. Simply put, the city cannot afford to have its concrete cover expand.
Some of the city’s developmental errors can be traced to colonial times, when industrial units and cotton mills sprang up in areas north of its southern tip (the original island of Bombay), and the hasty reclamation of various seawater channels between other islands left too many low-lying zones vulnerable to flooding. The real ill effects of environmental depredation, however, came with an influx of workers and the resultant overpopulation. The natural drainage and sewage system of south Mumbai, a part developed by the British Raj in accordance with a proper plan, has withstood the test of time. But the same cannot be said of other zones under the larger metropolitan area, unfortunately. Their topography is not just uneven, they cannot bear the burden of the industrial waste they have had to suffer since independence. If this was not in stark evidence to the city’s residents in earlier decades, it was largely because of the positive ecological effects of the Aarey forest patch, the last green “lung" of the expansive metropolis.
The 1,300-hectare forest area, a government-declared “green zone", has long been home to tribal communities, apart from the habitat of a wide range of flora and fauna. But then, like many other open spaces in this city of extreme land scarcity, it was also a temptation that developmental agencies could hardly resist. Its encroachment began slowly, but now threatens to turn alarming. When 40 hectares of the forested land was used for a massive zoo, few complained. A zoological park did not seem out of place in the area, so it did not bother too many residents of Mumbai. But another part of the forest could soon be felled to accommodate a metro rail line and a multi-storey parking block. Protests over this have erupted, and the city’s municipal corporation has received 82,000 signatures as part of an online petition to save the last remaining green cover of Mumbai. Since the deforestation of Aarey was never part of the 2014-2034 development plan approved for the city, environmental activists hope that the proposal could successfully be challenged in court. Saving greenery is a cause that usually manages to rally citizens with high levels of civic awareness. Saving this forest, though, should be a common cause for all Mumbaikars. It is crucial to the survival of Mumbai as a habitable city.
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