Urban Life Style and Carbon Footprint
 

Urbanisation is a process leading to the establishment of huge network of industries, roads, houses, buildings and so on. But establishing such networks comes with a cost and it may require clearing of a vast area of land that could have once been an agricultural land, a forest land or a water body. In retrospect, the history of urbanisation is replete with such examples where a huge tract of forest land or agricultural land was cleared for the purpose of developing a colony. A classic example is that of East India Company that developed a network of rail tracks which involved clearing of a huge forest cover. Interestingly, this operation continues till date, only the construction companies have replaced the East India Company. The farmers who were once practicing agriculture in and around Noida were given compensation by the UP government for selling off their land where now a number of flats and houses have been constructed.

Now, when we clear a land of its floral life it also leads to the clearing of a number of faunal species and this does not augur well for the health of the eco-system. Although urbanisation may be seen as a process which leads to creation of a network of infrastructure to provide comfort to humans with development of health institutions, educational institutions, markets, etc - it also has the potential of creating discomfort for us with the carbon footprint it leaves behind. There is a simple reason behind this - when we develop urban centres, it demands construction of a network of buildings, market, industries, etc. all of which constitute eco-degrading activities. So, it will not be wrong to say that the process of urbanisation, which is ultimately meant for improving the life condition of the masses, from its very inception has the inbuilt potential for creating carbon footprint.

From the process of urbanisation let us move to specific situations of an urban setup which directly or indirectly affect the processes that may accelerate the creation of carbon footprint. While traveling in a train it is a common experience that when the train passes through a village the quantity and the nature of waste seen around the rail track is totally different compared to the type of waste to be seen while passing through an urban center. The urban waste predominantly comprises plastics and other derivatives of plastics which give rise to the greenhouse effect. Also, aesthetically the sight of a village area is far more pleasing to the eyes than the sight of an urban centre with its characteristic over flowing sewage and industrial waste.

Today, in a metropolitan city like Delhi there is great emphasis on creating a complete eco-system with diverse kinds of flora and fauna.

The other space that is catching the attention of the urban architects and landscape designers is for avenue tress. But the rapid growth of road network to ease the flow of the ever growing volume of traffic, is eating up the avenue tree space and putting huge pressure on the existing 16000 parks of Delhi to be converted into parking areas. In the name of beautification of the city and Common Wealth Games, side walks and pavements have been dug up all over Delhi and they are being reconstructed with red granite tiles brought in from the Aravalli hill range of the neighboring state of Haryana. It is also a well-known fact that tile production is a power intensive activity and thus is capable of creating a huge carbon footprint. The very act of procuring red granite stones from Aravalli range of Haryana has left a vast area of it completely ravaged - a matter that was continuously tracked and reported by the leading dailies of Delhi.

Recently, a young boy returning home from his tuition class on his bike met with a fatal accident in the Rohini area of Delhi. One of the reasons that caused his death can be attributed to the kind of urban and landscape planning that we do for our cities. The boy had lost control over his bike and rammed into the grilled divider that we see all over the city today. Had the government of Delhi accepted the proposal of creating a running hedge instead of the grilled divider the boy may be alive today. The running hedge is also helpful as it acts as an obstruction to the lights of the vehicles during night. We now also know that the manufacture of iron products contribute towards creating carbon footprint.

Today our individual perception of beauty is often coloured with the western concept of beauty. In case of parks and cities we are so taken up by the western urban greens that we wish to see a single type of tree or plant specie in a single line, so caught up are we with the sense of symmetry that we have begun to ignore the fact that India has a wide variety of flora and fauna in comparison to its western counterparts. We often come across different varieties of palm trees inside Delhi parks and avenues which though an exotic species, does not help much in enhancing the local bio-diversity.

The very purpose of this article is to highlight some of the issues which we see and experience in our daily lives as urban dwellers often tend to ignore because we are so preoccupied with fulfilling life’s other priorities. I would only urge readers to act to mitigating these issues by making small changes in our lives, by saying ‘no’ to plastics, tiles, exotic floral species and a blind adherence to western aesthetics and town planning. q

Rahul Priyadarshi
rpriyadarshi@devalt.org