[Urbanstudy] Butchering Trees and Pavements

[sharan at sarai.net]

Dear all,

As we follow the leads first provided by Ravi, the question that keeps
cropping up, across a range of issues, is not only of the 'real' costs and
benefits, but of debates around the basic principles through which we make
a case for one or the other choice.  Kaveri's mail - on the necessarily
subjective calculations cost-benefit analysis; medium and long-term
implications and Yashdeep's deployment of 'sustainability' argument - all
invoke concepts that are in need of greater elaboration, on this list, and
elsewhere. What they also suggest is that the choices on offer are far from
obvious. I first came across this problem around the time that CNG was
being implemented in Delhi and till date I'm conflicted about the benefits
of the move when the improvements in air quality (necessary in my
opinion)are considered together with the costs that were borne largely by
migrant auto-drivers.  Similarly, conflicting assessments around the
closure of polluting (illegal?)factories and accompanying job losses. In
this regard environmental choices in the urban contexts may present us a
very different scenario than in rural contexts where, Ram Guha pointed out
several years ago, there is greater synergy between claims for justice and
environmental good.

For me, what is stake is the very imagination of our urban forms and
desirable environments and, equally importantly, the cultivation of public
dialogues to argue and contest these forms. Historically, urban reform has
been a rather authoritarian process (Haussmanns of the word and their
Indian clones are well known to readers of this list)and the greater the
complexity of the environmental issues confronting us, perhaps greater the
challenge to think through the ways in which we deal with policy, legal and
scientific discourses about our urban futures and environmental choices.

Regards,
Dipu

 On March 7, 11:58 am Kaveri Gill <kg204 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:
> Dear Ravi and Yashdeep,
>
> Ravi, thanks for your email, I agree with you 100%, they've just been
> chopping more trees this morning in some neighbourhoods of Delhi -
> completely unnecessary and such a waste!
>
> On your questions, Yashdeep, I reply as an economist albeit one
> living outside India at the moment:
>
> >   a.. While the cutting down of trees is clearly gut-wrenching,
> >  especially to those for whom they have special meaning, is it not
> >  true that the HCBS will have a beneficial ramifications on the
> >  wider society (read as those who do not drive cars) in the long
> run?
>
> We don't have any evidence of this until we have seen some
> cost-benefit studies etc. However, even economists now voice serious
> doubt about the validity of these justifications, since depending on
> how you score and weight things, you get completely different answers
> - hence totally subjective and not objective! Why don't they put a
> congestion charge on cars so there are less vehicles on the streets
> fullstop, the bus service will automatically improve?!
>
> >   b.. I am not an advocate to justify the means employed towards
> >  the HCBS end, but are not trees a renewable resource, and while
> >  the cutting down of trees may impact the immediate aesthetics of
> >  the street, will not the sutainable benefits of improved public
> >  transport outlast this short-term disturnbance to the streetscape?
> >  I look forward to my narrow assumptions being corrected.
>
> In theory, trees are a renewable resource, but I am not to sure about
> this being a short term disturbance. Given all the noise about
> climate change and global warming - and trees are a key factor in
> absorbing CO2 emissions, so we should be cultivating them not felling
> them and not just on aesthetic grounds - I think this will be
> disastrous for Delhi in the medium to long-term as well!
> >
> Regards,
> Kaveri
>
> >   ----- Original Message -----
> >   From: Ravi Agarwal
> >   To: urbanstudygroup sarai
> >   Sent: Friday, March 02, 2007 5:51 PM
> >   Subject: [Urbanstudy] Butchering Trees and Pavements
> >
> >
> >   Dear all,
> >
> >   As I spend another morning today trying to gather evidence of the
> >   trees , over 2500, marked for felling, I find I cannot shoot for
> >   more than some minutes. To see fully grown trees, of all shades
> >   and varieties, the type you cannot find in Delhi any more, some
> >   over 50 years old marked for felling in yellow ink and numbers
> >   etched onto the tree trunks, is more than I can accept. Behind
> >   the construction boards of the HSBS ( High Capacity Bus Service)
> >   lies a trail of disaster. Uprooted giants of trees, some axed,
> >   some bleeding at the roots, mercilessly felled.
> >
> >   I know of no other city where 8 land higways criss cross it. (
> >   From exisiting 6 lane this will now become 8 lane with the new
> >   service). Cleave it through and hack all that in its way. And a
> >   citenzery whcih is so quiet that it took a week to even get the
> >   media to do a story on it, and that also only via a concerned
> >   reporter. There is such silence and such uncertainty. The
> >   isolation which can be afforded through the window panes of cars,
> >   where we sit an decide if we can afford to raise our voices or
> >   maybe this will go away and no one will know. Like it never
> > hapenned.
> >   My friend the photo printer told me "dil dehal jaata hai jab mei
> >   us sarak per jaato hoon. Kitne bade and sunder per, aise hi kaat
> >   denge.?" My heart stops when I go on that road, will such big and
> >   majestic trees just be cut? Another friend who lives in Saket,
> >   refuses to look out of the taxi window, since it upsets her so
> >   much. Like it does me.
> >
> >   Whose consensus was sought. When this project was approved. Who
> >   made the decision that the road is needed. Who saw the traffic
> >   studies? Who justified it. Who executed it? How is the consensus
> >   made? How are such decisions taken? Someone's pet project.
> >   Someone well respected in the city. Someone who has always talked
> >   about pedisterisation and cycle ways. Now that very project
> >   stripping the city of trees, and pavements. For a high capacity
> > bus!
> >   In the last post I wrote about my inability to act. I wonder if
> >   it is the larger inability to act. How we seem to have said 'yes'
> >   without saying anything. How we maybe are caught up in our not
> >   wanting to neogotiate our little gains or how we justify them to
> >   ourselves (the city needs better transport! - read as "I like my
> >   car!"). There is not point thinking and pontificating if we are
> >   not prepared to participate in what is going on. The city has
> >   been changing as I write. By April end, the city would have lost
> >   over 3000 of its most glorious and old trees. Then we can get to
> >   work on time. I suppose - to a better future!
> >
> >   ravi agarwal
> >
> >
> >
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