My City My Responsibility - Need Clean, Green Rivers and much more!!!!

 Dear Friends, 

Selfie with fellow concerned citizens!

Being part of the Pune River Revival (PRR) movement has been a challenging journey. Everyday a group of concerned citizens and members of Jeevitnadi, the organisation which is spearheading this movement are striving harder from all the spheres just to ensure that the so-called 'rejuvenation' plan on our RIVERFRONT proposed by the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) be SCRAPPED and the ecological ALTERNATIVE suggested by Jeevitnadi team be adopted! 

Mature tree marked to be cut

Every now and then there's a walk on the stretches where the rampant devastating work has been initiated. I visited the stretch at the Bund Garden where I witnessed illegitimate cutting of almost 700-1000 trees in a stretch of less than 500 m. You can imagine how dense is the vegetation along the stretch. Among these 700+ trees there were several trees that were old grown mature heritage trees that housed thousands of birds, mammals, insects and microorganisms (a good biodiversity). There are a number of trees that are planted for transplanting blah blah...while a lot of them are shrubs forming a kind of layered vegetation, a mini version of forest setting that we generally see in a typical forest ecosystem. 

However, this vegetation is being ruthlessly cleared either by cutting or simply dumping construction debris on it in order to ensure fast tracking the DEVELOPMENT process. My fellow citizens Satya and Uma said that they are giving LIVE samadhi to these trees in Marathi it is 'Jivant Samadhi'.

The way this is taking place is simply mindless and illogical, because there's no point in clearing old grown existing trees and dense vegetation just to create newly grown green grass patches along with other manicured vegetation and concrete structures. Definitely there has to be a way out in order to make our riverfront sustainable! 

Trees and shrubs dumped under the debris

The basic LACK of understanding in HOW the riverbed functions, WHAT are its features and WHAT ecosystem services it offers can be clearly seen here. The river water is full of water hyacinth (green that we don't want) and is smelly. Since this stretch is also part of the Boat club there's plan to have boating activity here, however unless we have consistent clean running water in the rivers, boat rides or any activity along the river is worthless. The river is dead, needs restoration!  

Water hyacinth in the river

Apart from this destruction, the scene at the construction labor colony, had been a disheartening scene too. The workers, their families and young ones are residing in tin sheet temporary hutments and facing the scorching heat waves. However these hutments are being sheltered by the full grown trees demarcated to be cleared. What an irony! 

Construction workers colony

Seeing their condition and the destructive site work just gives one an understanding that how careless and ignorant is the overall process of riverfront development! They say project intends to give quality of life to the citizens but it does not reflect in the process! 

If then it is said that WE the environmentalist or activists or whatever names they call us are against development then YES, we are! Because this is 2023 and we are still functioning as if we are in the 1980's when we knew the word 'sustainability' without knowing its meaning. We never valued our people and our environment but now is the time we better adhere to the present norms and align ourselves to the Sustainable Development Goals in order to save ourselves.  

With the rising heat and abrupt changes in day to day weather because of the Climate crisis that we all are in, we cannot afford this careless, mindless, money minting attitude. Lets ensure our economy thrives but so does our environment and our people!!!

As a concerned citizen I want answers to all the so-called development happening in the city as to where are we heading???

We need our basic services in place, listing some of them below.

• Pollution free spaces. 
• Clean rivers.
• Safe public spaces.
• Pothole free roads.
• Appropriate shaded parking spaces. 
• Efficiently managed traffic.
• Safe walking and cycling spaces.
• Less or only required flyovers (and NO flyovers at the expense of our hills).
• Efficient waste management services (segregation first by citizens of course!) with 100% organic waste managed at source (compost/biogas/biochar).
• 100% treatment of wastewater and using this water for construction activities reducing load on local fresh water sources. 
• Efficient, consistent and clean sources of electricity and sustainable water supply. 
• Rainwater harvesting wherever feasible and 100% for residential complexes.
• Conservation of existing aquifers, green spaces, heritage areas and our hills and water bodies. 

More can be added to the list. Please share your opinion on this poll: Click here

Unless we have these in place, we DON'T need any beautified riverfront that compromises our natural ecosystem services and paints artificial green picture having a dark black future!

Pournima Agarkar.

www.samuchit.com

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MUSINGS BY PRIYADARSHINI KARVE: SMARTness for Cities!

SMART cities is the buzzword today! Pune is hoping to be one of the 100 SMART cities under the new SMART cities mission of the Government of India, and has invited citizens to participate in the planning process. 

I have been looking at sustainability issues in urbanisation in the Indian context for a while now, so naturally I got interested in this initiative and started doing some research. So what is this SMART all about, and how do we make a city SMART, irrespective of the IQ of its citizens?

The term SMART has a very specific meaning in the context of control systems. If any process is being controlled by an engineered mechanism that is capable of taking feedback from the process, and using it to change its response appropriately, it is called a SMART mechanism. For example, the thermostat in our refrigerator is a SMART system. It senses the temperature inside the fridge, and will start the cooling process only when the temperature increases beyond a pre-programmed limit. The cooling system will be on till the temperature drops below another pre-determined limit, and then it will shut off. Thus the low temperature is constantly maintained even though the power is not consumed constantly. Thus, this mechanism improves the efficiency of the fridge without compromising on performance. This is just one of the simplest SMART mechanisms that is experienced everyday, but one can have many different types of SMART systems. 

The term as well as the concept of SMART cities first emerged from this understanding of the word. Basically, a city that uses information technology tools to allow its governance systems to be more efficient and responsive, is called a SMART city. For example, a SMART city may have street lights that change intensity of light in response to the density of traffic on the road and the intensity of ambient light (from the sun or moon, or any other light sources in the surrounding areas). 

The Government of India initiative uses the same wording, but has applied a much broader meaning to it. The idea here is to create the infrastructure suitable for SMARTness, AND deploy the IT systems to improve the efficiency and responsiveness with which various urban services are provided to the citizens. In other words we are trying to leapfrog the process of urban development to SMART cities, from current large, chaotic, and inefficiently and incompetently governed concentrations of huge population (which is what our cities at present are!)

There is nothing wrong in leapfrogging, in fact that is a right strategy for a developing country - why stumble through the same mistakes that the pioneers have done in order to reach the end goal? So, definitely aiming for the ideal directly by a shortcut is justified. The issue however is what is one's definition of 'ideal'?

The opening paragraph talks about 'why' SMART cities mission, and that is where I see a problem, from a sustainability perspective. 

To my mind, any urban development project is fully justified today simply because of the sheer number of people living in urban spaces. Across the world nearly 55% people live in cities now and the number is continually increasing. In India, the percentage of urban population is still much less, at 38% (Source: 2011 census data), but according to the last census, the population growth in urban areas over the period 2001-2011 was higher than the population growth in rural areas. It is the first time that this trend was observed in India. Even the population growth rate, while drastically dropping down in rural areas, marginally increased in urban areas. Both of these trends are a result of the combination of rural to urban migration and urbanisation of rural areas. The time is not too far in the future when even in India nearly half the population will be living in urban spaces. 

Unfortunately, 'living in urban space' does not necessarily mean 'living good'. The wellness of urban population is highly questionable in our cities, where high rise palatial buildings are cheek by jowl with slums. Therefore, in a democratic country the desire to improve the quality of life of a majority of its citizens should in itself be a sufficient reason for engaging in any activity aimed at improving the urban infrastructure - to ensure economic sufficiency and empowerment of all social strata, in an environmentally benign manner. 

The opening paragraph of the SMART city guidelines document from the Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India, makes a passing reference to the population trend, but talks more about the contribution of urban areas to GDP of the country. It seems that the improvement in urban infrastructure is justified because of the high economic gains emanating from cities. Does this then mean that all the elements of improvement to be incorporated in a SMART city would also be geared towards improving GDP only? In such a scheme of things, the priority for economically unproductive needs of 'well being' such as social equity and environmental sustainability is bound to be low! 

Also the GDP logic in itself is problematic. The urban contribution to GDP would be impossible without all the resources that come into the city from outside its geographical limits. Do cities grow their own food, harvest their own water, make their own electricity and petroleum fuels, absorb their own waste?? How long will a city like Mumbai survive, let alone contribute to GDP, if it is totally cut off from the mainland? (It is actually possible to do this because Mumbai is an island in the Arabian Sea, and approached only via bridges from any side!) 

On the positive side, the guidelines are just that - guidelines. The document emphasises that every city needs to evolve its own vision of what it wants to be as a SMART city, and the vision should come not just from the city administration but also from the citizens. It is therefore imperative for us, urban citizens in India, to get involved in such dialogues within our cities, to ensure that we don't just get developed as a milk cow of GDP growth, but ensure that the vision of our SMART city encompasses inclusiveness and sustainability for our own well being. The GDP gains will then automatically come as a bonus anyway! 

Priyadarshini Karve

Director

Samuchit Enviro Tech

#BeModernBeResponsibleBeRespectful



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