Let’s build city sponges, not concrete jungles

Hard and soft measures often go together. Urban planning, for example, can help increase resilience to flood risks by featuring drainage systems that provide spaces to safely collect and store floodwater

The Yamuna water is reaching the Supreme Court, said a breaking news headline on Thursday night. It sounded as though the river were making an appeal to the apex court to intervene and save it. In a way, the river did convey that message.

For years, planners have been ignoring the importance of rivers blinded by reckless and haphazard development. Nature has been sending us warning signals, yet we have been neglecting them. Result: flood ravage in some part of the country or the other. Now the fury has reached the national capital. Hope, at least now the planners would realise the dangers of reckless development and the political leadership will listen in now that the capital is in a mess.

There is nothing new about water logging in Delhi with the slightest rain, thanks to the notorious drainage system. But that is not limited to Delhi alone. Even the so-called planned city of Chandigarh has reeled under floods with the planning going haywires. Water reached the first floor level, screamed a tweet, reminding us of the flood fury that we faced in Mumbai in 2006.

The National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) has been admittedly doing a great job in saving the people. But I think it is time one went beyond disaster management and think of disaster prevention.

Climate is changing and it will continue to change. There is no escape. Rains are going to be erratic and at times torrential. There is no point in blaming it on the weather, completely. Most disasters are manmade. The governments know it. Yet they don’t do anything to prove Charles Dudley Warner wrong (Remember his famous saying, everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it which Mark Twain quoted in his humorous talks).

Other than tomatoes and onions, it is time one made floods in particular and environment in general election issues since they are of everybody’s concern. Let me remind the readers the harsh truth – flash floods in any area destroy everything that we have painstakingly built with our hard-earned money. For you and me these blows are unbearable. Politicians may get away by organising few relief camps and announcing monetary help which hardly reaches the victims. Floods in cities create a lasting impact as they pollute the area and bring in diseases such as cholera. Drinking water becomes scarce in the marooned areas. I am deliberately reminding the reader of these apparent results as we tend to forget the misery after a week or so and get back to our daily routine.

As I have mentioned several times earlier, it has become fashionable for our leaders to talk big on global forums about the GreenHouse effect, global warming and El Nino, ESG and so on. But when it comes to implementation on ground, in India, nothing really happens. I really mean it. We are supposed to be benefiting from the satellite mapping and data on crop patterns. Is it happening in practice? Why do we land ourselves in crop mess – from pulses to tomatoes - if the governments diligently use the satellite data? Science may be delivering, but is the politician acting on timely intervention and course correction?

From the hills to the plains to the seas, we are just constantly destroying whatever Nature has given us. No, I am not generalizing the disasters. Himachal Pradesh does not want tourism at the risk of destruction of the hills, properties and lives, said a video that has gone viral. “It’s not weather, it’s corruption,” said another one on floods in Gurugram. We take time in making such posts viral and making comments and forget about them when we get to see some new videos on some pop or Bollywood music or silly controversies. Its high time one could say enough is enough and get down to accountability. Let’s start making our elected representatives accountable, at least for the mismanagement of our civic system. I am not talking about just the mismanaged garbage or clogged drainages for which the last man in the row, the corporator (or councillor) is responsible. I am talking about the larger canvas – your and my city. Let us just focus on our urban planning in which all of us are stakeholders. A World Bank blog rightly said, rather than reducing risks, current urban development patterns are contributing to aggravating these risks.

Hard and soft measures often go together. Urban planning, for example, can help increase resilience to flood risks by featuring drainage systems that provide spaces to safely collect and store floodwater. The city thus acts as a ‘sponge’, limiting surges and releasing rainwater as a resource, says The United Nations World Water Development Report 2020.

If we analyse how badly the planning is being done, we realise what we have been ignoring as a collective society. It is not the responsibility of merely few environment lovers like me to point out the mess when an Urban Development Minister allows real estate construction on river banks, ignoring the floodplains. It is for the people there to ask: What the hell is going on here? Similarly, the unchecked hill development and coastal zone violations and burial of wetlands make way for IT Hubs.

The media may get headlines about thousands of crores of rupee of investments in infrastructure projects such as IT parks, SEZs and integrated townships. It is not the responsibility of the environment to beat journalists alone to wait for protests or complaints. The infrastructure or real estate beat journalists also must raise questions about the impact on the environment? For instance, they should ask – why are you burying our lakes and wetlands?

When we report about the environment minister planting a handful of mangroves, we should also ask him about the destruction of hundreds of thousands of sea forests under the guise of infrastructure.

The other day an FM channel anchor asked me what a common man does about environmental protection. I just said: start asking questions, use the social media tools for society and keep your eyes and ears open for any violation around you.

It’s the election season. Let us remind our politicians the lessons that we learnt in primary schools about the importance of trees, lakes, rivers, air and the seas. While urbanisation is inevitable to absorb a rising economy and to absorb large populations, we must also plan for measures to absorb and store water.

As a report on how San Salvador uses Nature to fight floods said: When vegetation is replaced with concrete, the ground loses its permeability. But trees and other vegetation can be used as sponges, drawing enormous quantities of water into the earth, preventing erosion, limiting floods and recharging groundwater supplies for times of drought.

Let us build sponge cities in India – use Nature to save ourselves from floods.

(The columnist is a Mumbai-based independent media veteran, running websites and a you tube channel known for his thought-provoking messaging.)