'Saplings cannot replace trees': Delhi’s citizens struggle to save the city's lungs

In the last week of June, amid the political blame game between the Centre and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) over permission to cut over 14,000 trees in south Delhi, some 1,500 people participated in what came to be known as Delhi’s own Chipko movement.

The ruling AAP was up in arms against the Union government, alleging that around 17,000 trees will be felled for the redevelopment plan. But Union minister Harsh Vardhan said the area where the trees were to be felled was a “non-forest area” and the Forest Department of the Government of India had nothing to do with it.

Luckily, the citizens of Delhi would have none of this confusion and took matters into their own hands — quite literally. Led by environmental activists, residents hugged the trees that were to be felled, tied green ribbons around them and shouted slogans against the proposed move. They also carried placards urging the government to take measures to save trees. This was Delhi’s tribute to what  Sunderlal Bahuguna did in the 1970s.

The protests came up around government colonies in South Delhi which needed to be redeveloped, environmentalist Neha Sinha explained. “These are places where government officers usually stay. So the first thing to be noted is that people are protesting against felling of trees at places where they themselves don’t stay — it’s a feeling towards the city’s trees.”

Soon after the protests, the Delhi High Court and the National Green Tribunal (NGT) passed orders asking for a stay on the felling of trees. “I wouldn’t call it a victory yet because it’s just a stay in the court,” she said.

Conflicting priorities

Amid the decision to fell the thousands of trees, the government tried to pacify activists by promising to plant saplings around those areas. But that is far from a sustainable solution, Sinha says. “A sapling cannot do what a mature tree can. It takes 20-25 years for the sapling to become a tree and give us the services that we really need.”

Dr Ravi Kumar Kunchala, assistant professor in the Centre for Atmospheric Sciences in IIT Delhi, echoed her concern. “Saplings of course take tens of years to be able to support the environmental needs of a city like Delhi, which is a land-locked area. But with the growing pace of infrastructural development that we are witnessing in the city, we have to find alternative solutions to benefit everyone.”

Kunchala insists that we take the “bigger picture” into consideration, as infrastructural projects are not going to stop in major cities. “If the felling of trees comes to be absolutely necessary for infrastructural projects in the city, like building of metro networks or bridges, government policies will have to take care of compensating the damage done here through other activities.

“The government will have to invest heavily in establishing technologies that can reduce the emissions of industries, vehicles and factories in the region. It will also have to take lessons from other countries which surge ahead with massive infrastructural projects without having the environment to take a toll,” he told tech2.

One such solution, he said, is switching to cleaner sources of energy through “structural changes in policy making” in India. “It is high time our focus shifts to renewable energy. If the government wants to cut trees to build bridges, it has to ensure the damage done is compensated by such practices.”

Reality check

But before we attempt the structural changes, we must acknowledge where we stand with respect to our forests and the environment at large. According to the  State of Forest Report 2017  released by the government in February this year, India’s total forest cover increased by 0.94 percent in the last two years — 7,01,673 square kilometers to 7,08,273 square kilometres since its last assessment in 2015. However, such figures can be misleading, experts point out.

Our forest cover hasn’t actually gone up, Sinha says, adding that the report depends on satellite imagery and hence is not able to penetrate everywhere. “A lot tea and coffee estates also get counted as forests, which are actually commercial utilisation of plans, and not forests. There have been scientific papers written that critique the Forest Survey of India’s methods. There were a lot of trees cut in the last one year alone, so it is absolutely not possible for forest cover to actually increase,” she said.

Another environment expert also suggested that the numbers in the report cannot be believed at face value. “The 2015 assessment covered 589 districts of the country, while the new assessment covers 633 districts. Since the assessment area is not constant and figures from other parameters are not so encouraging, we should restrain from celebrating the forest cover increase,” Ajay Kumar Saxena from the Centre for Science and Environment, said in an interview .

‘We cannot buy oxygen’

In such uncertain times, the culture of protests against “eco-unfriendly” government measures is still inspiring. “We’ve seen in Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru how citizens have come out in protests against the cutting of trees. Despite that, trees get cut at night, they get cut and carried away. It happens all the time. But these movements have been amazing, in the sense that people are actually patrolling the streets, day and night,” Sinha said.

On the other hand, Kunchala insists we will have to change our lifestyles sooner or later to environmentally friendly ways. “With the increasing population and high demand for jobs, these infrastructure projects are unlikely to stop. The only way forward is switching to sustainable practices on a larger scale. They may not yield results in a short window, but we will survive in the long run.”

“We cannot buy oxygen. We may buy more air filters and air conditioners in our houses, but we still need to breathe,” Sinha said.

tech2 attempted to contact representatives in the Department of Environment, Government of Delhi, as well as Environment Minister Imran Hussain, but both attempts were unsuccessful.