More trees for Mumbai

Mumbai: As the world prepares to combat climate change, environmentalists and concerned citizens of India's commercial capital continue to fight a battle to save trees from being cut, to make way for roads and new construction.

A tree census by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) revealed that the city has one tree for 6.24 people compared to three trees for one person in New York.

The human-to-tree ratio also differs in various parts of Mumbai with the worst ratio of 51.7 people for one tree in South Mumbai's Marine Lines and Girgaum areas.

The tree cover improves in many of the northern suburbs as in Borivili, Mulund Mankhurd and Goregaon with Borivili having the best cover of one tree for 3.5 people.

The survey does not include the Sanjay Gandhi National Park or the Aarey Colony in Goregaon.

Sumaira Abdul Ali, an environmentalist and founder of Awaaz Foundation, said, "We need to increase Mumbai's tree cover urgently as that is the only way to reduce the carbon dioxide content in the air. We also want to make it mandatory that all new trees that are planted are indigenous ones."

Not enough

Planting more trees is not enough, they should bear fruit too — the Indian jamun, neem, champak, peepal, jackfruit and other trees attract birds, squirrels and other animals that survive on them for their food.

"In fact, ornamental trees, especially the beautiful gul mohur which flowers in summer, has shorter roots and often collapses during monsoons," she said. "Therefore, we are asking the BMC to plant indigenous trees wherever the exotic ones collapse."

In her fight for a cleaner atmosphere, including a lesser noisy one, Ali filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the Bombay High Court in 2006 so that the BMC utilised the millions of rupees collected from the public for every land transaction to plant new trees.

"The matter came up for hearing recently but has been adjourned to January since the state government did not have its affidavit ready on how many trees have been cut and replanted."

She said it is unfortunate that the chairmanship of the BMC's tree authority falls under the BMC Commissioner himself.

Eventually, it is development that wins and trees are secondary.

"All we are asking is to try and save the trees wherever possible and give us information on the replanting procedure," she said.

Environmentalists say there is no record of replanted trees since most do not survive.