Valdar's Blog

It is sad but true in five years time, Mangalore will have no greenery left within the core city. The thought is horrible; can you imagine the city is just grey with concrete and steel? It is time to start imagining, it is happening and with a quite a pace at it. The city has lost 3 per cent of its green cover in just 2 years. Thanks to the development bug, if things are not controlled the city will be out of the safe bracket for green cover in less than 5 years according to an estimation.

The fears of Mangalore going bald stems from the recent developments, the real estate, road concretization and reclamation of land from the estuarine areas and expansion of city. The city area has grown from 90 square kilometers into 170 square kilometers in the last 20 years and about 70 percent of it happening in the last 10 years.

According to the World Environment standards a city of Mangalore’s size (in terms of economic growth it is called tier II city) should have nothing less than 30 per cent of its urban area under the green cover according to the recent standards, In the pre liberalization period it used to be 17 per cent as per the urban development ceiling, but during the recent times the international environmental standards have been reset and it is mandatory that all tier II cities should maintain 30 per cent green cover.

Just like Mangalore the tier two cities like Coimbatore, Hubli, Gulburga Ernakulum, Kochi, Panaji are also facing less green cover. According to a high ranking forest official at Aranya Bhavana  (Forest Department headquarters) in Malleshwaram in Bangalore, Mangalore has seen rapid deforestation in the recent years and the satellite imagery confirms that Mangalore has lost its green cover faster than the other cities.

On the ground, things are more visible to the discerning eyes. Trees are being felled in hundreds for constructing buildings, and laying concrete roads. According to the Mangalore City Corporation figures since 2001 the city has lost more than 800 trees that were more than 25 years of age. In the core city areas like Balmatta, Car Street, Hampankatta, Urva, Ashoknagar, Dambel, Bejai, the social forestry system is a non starter. They have cut down all the endemic species of trees with large canopies like Deodhar, Goli, Ashwattha and many other varieties have been cut and in their places trees with very small canopies have been planted by the Forest department, these trees have no ecological significance.

The Environmental Engineering department which is a specialized department in Mangalore City Corporation has already warned of rapid loss of green cover, which has been meekly admitted by the city fathers and have earmarked Rs. 5 lakhs towards social forestry programme of the Forest department and the Zilla Panchayat.

It is not that people of Mangalore are insensitive to the environmental needs of their city, but the concrete and real estate lobbies are so powerful that they can make or mar the city’s prospects and common people have no way of stopping them as the bureaucracy, and the political leaders were all for protecting the interests of those lobbies. Some builder who has now got into the business of building concrete roads and acquires machinery the administration goes head over heels to give him business. There is no denying that the city needs good roads but at what cost ask the environmental groups. They point out that when the concrete roads are built they do not earmark place for planting trees they do not leave enough space for the growth of large trees. In a classic case the local people have brought a stay order from the court for the widening of the road in Valencia on the argument that the MCC had plans to cut 19 large trees and has made no provision to plant new trees of the same girth.

Balmatta is another classic case between the Collectors gate to the Dr. Ambedkar circle (earlier Jyothi circle) after widening and concretization of this road there is not even one tree is standing. From Ambedkar circle to Milagres centre again there are no trees.