DID YOU KNOW ?
In the last 13 years, Delhi lost 112,169 trees – 1 per hour, says government data.
“All these trees were cut legally. But we still don’t know how many were felled illegally,” said Aditya Prasad, an advocate who has filed a case in the National Green Tribunal against PWD’s Vikaspuri elevated corridor project for which the agency has sought permission to fell around 800 trees.
Compensatory Afforestation Farce
Tree Expert Pradip Krishen says the consolation that ten saplings will be planted elsewhere for every tree lost, is a “fig leaf” to hide behind a disastrous decision. The forest departments ‘plantation model” will never compensate for the loss of forests and native city trees.
If you go to villages and outskirts of Delhi and look at any example of compensatory afforestation, it is a complete sham.
Saplings planted in 2015, the most recent plantation, have all but died.
Incidentally, the same year, UP made it to the Guinness Book of World Records for distributing 10 lakh saplings in a day.
Despite multiple plantation drives in the past decade, activists claim the 213-hectare vast expanse of reserve forest, which stretches between Gamma II and Delta sectors of Greater Noida, is devoid of its green cover.
Most polluted city on Earth
22 of world’s 30 most polluted cities are in India, with Delhi again ranked the world’s most polluted capital.
Gurugram in India was the most polluted city in the world in 2018.
The WHO estimates that 7 million people a year die prematurely from exposure to air pollution globally, with the World Bank calculating the cost to the world economy in lost labour as $225bn.
Felling trees affects citizens health
“Rampant Felling Of Trees Affects Right To Clean Air”, Says PIL :Karnataka HC Issues Notice To Tree Authority.
“It is submitted that despite the specific objective of the legislature with the Tree Act being to preserve trees, the very authorities constituted under the Tree Act have, by way of their negligence and dereliction, actually facilitated the very damage to the tree cover that they were constituted to prevent. It is humbly submitted that this rampant felling of trees has resulted in a rapid loss of green cover, water scarcity, increase in temperatures and pollution. It is submitted that these acts have resulted in a severe deterioration of the quality of life of the citizens of Bangaluru, a severe reduction in the health of its citizens and a severe degradation of the environment of the city.”
Deaths due to air pollution in Delhi
Nearly 15,000 people died prematurely in Delhi due to pollution by fine particulate matter in 2016, according to a new study which ranked the national capital third in a list of cities reporting most deaths due to air pollution.
7 "healthy air quality" days in 2 years
One study found that over a 730 day period between 2013 and 2015 the Indian capital’s air met ‘healthy’ standards for the particulate matter on only 7 days. Beijing’s air made the grade 58 times during the same period.
So, while thousands of trees are being felled in the worlds most polluted city, many invisible saplings are being planted far far away. Your leaders are also trying very hard to push a translocation policy, to remove full grown healthy trees from the most pollluted city on the planet to a place far away where no citizens would have ventured in all their life.
Recently, the Honourable National Green Tribunal ordered ITPO to translocate 1713 trees from inside their property to other spaces within the property so that they would not need to be killed. Out of 1713 trees, they were only able to transplant 36 trees, and out of those, you can guess how many are surviving. which leaves us with a grand figure of less than 2% success rate for transplanting trees in Delhi.
With this excellent success rate, they plan to fool you that all the trees in Delhi can be transplanted, just so that they can put cemented structures which will damage the health of millions of Delhi’s citizens while filling up the wallets of a few.
“The Environment Minister should stand up and say climate change is more important than ease of doing business. That is the courage we expect the Honourable Minister to demonstrate”
The debate on climate change in the Rajya Sabha on Thursday got heated when Congress MP Jairam Ramesh hit out at Union Minister Prakash Javadekar, saying that an Environment Minister’s “job is not to clear projects, it is to protect environment”.
India Not to Bow Down to International Pressure on Climate Change: Javadekar
The minister blamed the developed countries for not keeping up to their commitment of providing $100 billion and technology transfer collectively to developing countries like India for dealing with climate change.
