Green Options » urban ecology

“Sanitation for Dignity and Health”, Third South Asian Conference on Sanitation Underway in New Delhi, India

Govind Singh — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 21:29:02 +0000

Prime Minister of India inaugurating the Third South Asian Conference on Sanitation

“Sanitation has a strong connection not only with personal hygiene but also with human dignity and well-being, public health, nutrition and even education. Mahatma Gandhi had once said “Sanitation is more important than independence”. He made cleanliness and sanitation an integral part of the Gandhian way of living. His dream was total sanitation for all.”

With these words, the Prime Minister of India Dr. Manmohan Singh inaugurated the third South Asia Conference on Sanitation (SACOSAN) in New Delhi. The Conference holds a special significance because the year 2008 has been declared as the International Year of Sanitation. Themed on Sanitation for Dignity and Health, the conference is being attended by participants from over eight South-Asian countries. Startling reports indicate the PM’s constituency to have the least number of toilets within India!

Solar Powered Cycle-Rickshaws Launched in Delhi’s Oldest and Busiest Market

Govind Singh — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 11:24:24 +0000

A usual scene from Chandni Chowk: Delhi’s oldest and busiest market

Chandni Chowk (Moonlit Avenue) - a major street in the walled city of Old Delhi, established by the Mughals over three centuries ago, is one of the oldest and busiest markets in all of North India. The region has retained its historical character amidst considerable urban challenges, and the narrow lanes are now almost always choked with congestion.

In the past few weeks, Chandni Chowk featured in the media twice. Once for being declared India’s most polluted residential area and more recently for seeing the launch of solar-powered cycle rickshaws in the capital city. A package to clean the busy Chandni Chowk area has also been declared and solar energy is clearly paving the way for this change!

Urban Water Woes Meet Lessons From Environmental History, In India’s Capital City of Delhi

Govind Singh — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 21:24:15 +0000

Baoli - A centuries old step-well in the heart of Delhi city.

The urbanization process in India in the 20th century led to the formation of large city-centers with very high density of population. The urban sprawl also meant an immense pressure on the natural resources of these city-centers thus also affecting, among others, the quality of life of the urbanite. One of the first resource to get impacted was water - that began to both deplete and deteriorate as rapidly as was the pace of urbanization in the respective urban-centers.

Delhi, the capital of India has obviously been one of the cities to have now turned into a mega-city. Delhi faces regular water crisis that only aggravates in summers and all stakeholders agree on the inadequacy of Delhi’s current water supply.

But Delhi is also one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world. It has been the capital of many conquerors who ruled Northern part of present day India from here and has always been a populated center. Water was traditionally harvested in a number of ways to support the population that also comprised large armies; something, the planners of today can and should learn from.

The Rise of Urban Gaia?

Shirley Siluk Gregory — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 21:38:27 +0000

Cities and their even larger, fast-growing siblings — megacities (more than 10 million people) and hypercities (more than 20 million people) — aren’t just products of human civilization that dramatically affect their surrounding ecosystems. They’ve emerged as unique ecosystems in their own rights.

In “Global Change and the Ecology of Cities,” published in the Feb. 8 issue of Science, a team of researchers from Arizona, New Zealand and Australia argue we need to focus more on cities — and not just the “natural” world — to ensure a sustainable future.

“Cities, and the people in them, will ultimately determine the global biodiversity and ecosystem functioning,” says Jianguo (Jingle) Wu, one of the paper’s co-authors and an ecologist at Arizona State University’s (ASU) School of Life Sciences. “Sustainable urbanization is an unavoidable path to regional and global sustainability.”

The paper’s authors advocate a global approach to urban development that recognizes cities both cause and respond to environmental change. That strategy echoes an emerging school of thought that views cities as organic entities — a sort-of Urban Gaia, if you will — things that consume resources, produce waste and interact with their surroundings.

While the concept might sound bizarre, it might ultimately prove to be as effective a philosophy as James Lovelock’s Gaia view of Earth. After all, cities around the world are doing nothing but metastasizing, absorbing an ever-flowing influx of rural people either displaced from their traditional lifestyles and/or looking for a better future in a modernizing world.

As of today, according to TaskForce MegaCities, the world has anywhere from 16 to 39 megacities (population thresholds for meeting “megacity” status vary). In just seven more years, that number could approach 60. The trend is especially strong in Asia, which could be home to as many as 10 hypercities by 2025, according to one estimate.

Sustainably managing such urban growth could be key not only to better living in cities themselves, but a better Earth overall.

“The relatively young and highly interdisciplinary field of urban ecology has demonstrated how well-designed cities can actually have less overall impact on the environment than equivalent dispersed rural populations,” said Jonathan Fink, director of ASU’s Global Institute of Sustainability. “The kind of counter-intuitive research results described in (the Science) paper show how an ecological perspective can help urban planners and engineers find ways for society to live more harmoniously with nature.”