World | India
Green pressure forces Mumbai to count trees
The civic authorities of Mumbai have launched a census of trees in the city, bowing to pressure from tree lovers.
- By Pamela Raghunath, Correspondent
- Published: 00:00 March 2, 2007
Mumbai: The civic authorities of Mumbai have launched a census of trees in the city, bowing to pressure from tree lovers.
Under the Maharashtra (Urban Areas) Preservation of Trees Act, the first tree count in the city was conducted in 1998 when it was decided this exercise would be undertaken every five years.
"Unfortunately, the municipal commissioner, who is also chairman of the Tree Authority, did not listen to us until we warned him that it was already nine years since the last count was done," N.N. Naik, general secretary of the Friends of Trees told Gulf News.
He accuses the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) of deliberately not conducting the count as the gap in the existing number of trees with those that have been cut officially and illegally would come to the fore.
According to him, around 13,000 trees are cut officially every year for road widening or for any public project and unauthorised felling numbers could be as high as 10,000.
"To overcome unauthorised cutting of trees due to hectic construction activity in the city, we had often suggested to the Tree Authority that every tree in every municipal area - in private and public plots - should be given a code number but our advice went unheeded for obvious reasons. This is because builders, while developing residential and commercial projects, often chop off trees illegally with the connivance of civic officials."
For a population of 12 million, Mumbai needs 3.5 million trees. It has only around one million trees, which includes trees in the Borivili National park, Aarey colony and Bombay Port Trust area.
"That is why pollution levels are so high here and the city suffers from all kinds of respiratory problems," he says.
The BMC has given the job of counting trees to a private organisation, Environmental and Biotechnology Foundation which has also carried out tree census in Nashik, Thane and Mira-Bhayander.
The 1998 census took into account only trees with a 15-centimetre diameter and height of 1.3 metres above the ground. This time, trees or plants with a stem of 3.75 centimetre diameter will also be included. June 2007 is the deadline for the count when Mumbai will know the exact green cover it enjoys.
Information on the variety of species, their condition and age will also be collected in the process. Mumbai has more than 300 species of both indigenous and exotic trees. So far, nearly 100,000 trees have been counted.
In the wake of rapid urbanisation, the Preservation of Trees Act was first introduced in 1975 to protect and regulate felling of trees and to provide for planting of new trees in those areas. The Act was amended in 1996 but the first tree count was undertaken only two years later. The civic corporation's apathy towards trees got a jolt when the Bombay High Court in May 2004 indicted the former corporation commissioner for permitting hoardings on heritage buildings. The verdict was a result of city gynaecologist and tree lover Anahita Pundole who took on the civic body through a public interest litigation.
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