An Effort to Go, Green,
Introduction:
- Can the growth of urban areas and green space coexist? Can new motorways be built in older neighbourhoods without destroying avenue trees and roadside gardens? Telangana has demonstrated it to be.
- Hyderabad has won multiple awards for being a green metropolis with increasing forest cover over the previous two years, turning into Telangana’s infrastructural growth engine.
Telangana’s successes and critiques:
- The Miyawaki forest in Hyderabad is currently the biggest in the country. The 18-acre forest at Kavaguda, adjacent to the airport, is a refuge for birds and has 126 different native fruit and blooming tree varieties.
- The Miyawaki method, created by Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki, speeds up the growth of native plants to produce dense, quick-growing forests that resemble those that exist in their natural habitat.
- The State government has made a staggering number of tree plantings available to show the state of the forest. The Telangana administration’s main environmental initiative is an afforestation programme known as Telangana Ku Haritha Hram (the green garland of Telangana).
- Nonetheless, the figures baffle environmentalists. They claim to have noticed how the tree cover has been gradually vanishing. Moreover, reports commonly mention instances of old trees being cut down for construction. The trimming, cutting, and moving of trees for the Hyderabad E-Prix over the past few months has further illustrated the conflict between environmentally friendly practises and outward growth. Over 900 banyan trees, each roughly 100 years old, are the focus of a campaign by people on the outskirts of Hyderabad.
- Hyderabad was also selected as one of the “2020 Tree Cities of the World” along with another 51 cities by the Arbor Day Foundation and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) (during 2020 & cumulative 120 cities from 63 countries).
- The majority of the cities were from the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, and other countries. It is the only Indian city to have done so up to this point.
- The awards themselves have also drawn criticism. By providing a mayor’s certification of the city’s tree count, the administration submits the city’s nomination for the Arbor Day Foundation’s “Tree City of the World” award. There is no external auditing to confirm the data’s veracity.
Moving ahead:
- Although green programmes have gained credibility, the State still has to deal with indigenous people encroaching on forest grounds. The right to live permanently in areas that were originally designated as woods may have an impact on voting trends.
- Scheduled Tribes are given nine of the 119 seats in the State Legislature. According to the 2011 Census, STs make up 9.3% of the population of the State. In his address to the legislature, the chief minister said that STs would receive “pattas” (papers proving their land ownership). He qualified it by saying. He declared that additional encroachment into forests would not be authorised and that the land distribution was one of the last attempts to regularise property ownership.
Conclusion:
- Will it be successful to execute plantation drives and protect forests at the same time? To predict would be premature. Yet, it is clear from its actions that Telangana’s administration strives to be a “green state.” Although if counting the number of trees planted in a park may not be a good gauge of advancement, it is nevertheless a step in the right direction. It promotes environmental awareness, which up until a few years ago was seriously lacking.
