CNN-IBN STATE OF THE ENVIRONMENT OUTLOOK SURVEY
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Trees vs roads: What do Bangaloreans want?
Published on Tue, Jun 03, 2008 at 16:44, Updated on Wed, Jun 04, 2008 at 00:29 in Sci-Tech section
Tags: State Of The Environment, Bangalore , New Delhi
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New Delhi: It's a first of its kind, CNN-IBN Outlook State of the Environment Poll. CNN-IBN asked citizens living in six cities across India how they feel about environment issues. Do they care and are they willing to be more environmentally responsible? The answers to all these questions are right here, in the CNN-IBN special series, State of the Environment. The series is a build up to World Environment Day. Read on...
The survey found that a whopping 86 per cent of the people want the Government to plant trees, followed by reducing air pollution, providing clean drinking water, cleaning up rivers, collecting and segregating garbage and finally improving public transport.
Wider Roads or More Trees?
Given a choice what would people opt for? Wider roads or for protecting the trees in their city?
Fifty-seven per cent of the people of Bangalore who took part in the survey said that they prefer protection of trees, with only a 14 per cent opting for widening of roads by chopping trees.
Every day is a busy day for the capital city of Karnataka, Bangalore. Everyone is in a hurry, everyone is cursing the city's narrow congested roads. In this chaos, no none quite remembers when Bangalore's trees got rolled over by the needs of the city — the fastest growing city in the last 20 years.
Trees that are as old as 90 years have been axed to make way for the growing transport system. The trunks look corpses lying on the roads, sadly enough, in a city which has always taken a lot of pride in its ancient trees.
Trees have been chopped down to make way for 95 new roads across the city — including those leading to the new Bangaluru Airport.
In the past one year alone, 1,500 to 2,000 trees have been chopped and if the road widening plan goes ahead, more than 40,000 trees along a 400 km stretch will have to go.
Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike's Tree Officer, Shekhar, has little clarity on the figure.
“Roughly more than 700 trees have cut down and we’ve replanted about 70,” says he.
Environmental activist, Leo Saldanha calls it a tree genocide. His PIL to stop the road widening project has been accepted by the Karnataka High Court, but Leo knows that's just the start. He feels that Bangalore needs to revamp its road culture to save the trees.
"The change has to happen from the government," says he.
A large number of Bangaloreans opted for more trees over wider roads — for the sake of their children and for the coming generations. These are the voices that give hope that Bangalore, which was once known as the Garden City of India, will not end up looking like a barren dying tree.
(With inputs from Anu Jogesh)
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URBANEYE
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Cut all the trees... we can plant plastic trees in city. Don't forget the fact for every tree cut there
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The issue of cutting the trees is getting stuck up in the throat, as there is a very practical solution
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we do live in a strange city. We do not think twice about cutting the trees in front of our
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