Bengaluru

Vruksha

Forest Department

Metro

Sankey Road

Whitefield

Aranya Bhavan

Azim Premji University

This weekend, hectic effort by a group of citizens paid off for Bengaluru. Plans to construct a new Government Veterinary Hospital on Queens Road included the felling of four massive heritage trees. Citizens were not informed about these plans – an all too common story. Once they came to know, an informal group from Citizens forswung into action, with help from organizations like.com, and Talking Trees, who conducted tree surveys. After days of persistence, the trees were saved, with support from the Mayor andThanks to these efforts, Bengaluru retains four heritage trees that it would have lost. Our city is cooler, less polluted, and a home for scores of nesting fledglings that would have died when the trees were uprooted. Three rain trees and one mango tree shade and shelter an area of over 2.5 acres in the heart of urban chaos.Yet as Bengaluru celebrates, we must also mourn. Mourn for the hundreds of trees cut down in recent weeks, and lakhs that we lost in the past decade. At Silk Board circle, eight giant rain trees, one copper pod and one peepal were chopped down last month, on one of the most polluted roads in the city. Our published research has clearly shown why street trees are essential on such roads. They substantially reduce air pollution, improve health and increase life expectancy. Is the health of Bengaluru’s people not sufficient reason to protect street trees?On Sarjapur Road, ITPL road and Kanakapura road, scores of giant trees were felled in the past few months, many several decades old. Some banyan and peepal trees were centuries old, so large that they could not be spanned by a single person alone. Stand under one of these trees, and you will feel you are in another world, of sacred nature, joy and wonder. But walk along a concretised road devoid of trees, and you only experience stress, heat, pollution and frustration – a perfect recipe for urban rage, asthma and ulcers. Our elders knew this well. These giant trees were planted generations ago by visionary forest officers, nurtured by residents. In a few hours, centuries of carefully nurtured relationships between people and trees lay in tatters, as trees were chopped up and carted to the lumber yard. Due to last minute initiatives by local residents and civic groups, a few trees were saved by transplantation in a last ditch effort.When citizens protest, they are met with glib promises of planting thousands of saplings as replacement. But no number of saplings can match a heritage rain tree, banyan or peepal tree, whose single canopy can shade an acre of land, host hundreds of breeding birds, and cool down the road by several degrees.Every effort is made to subvert the process of tree protection. The Tree Act mandates that all plans to fell more than 50 trees for ‘public purpose’ must have public notification and consultation. Notifications of tree felling are deliberately buried in inconspicuous outlets, and released without sufficient notice, deliberately leaving citizen groups with little time to act. Consultations are held only in response to relentless pressure from Bengaluru’s ever-vigilant civic groups, and treated as a ritual nuisance, conducted with minimal notice, even cancelled without information. Tree committees formed to examine reasons for tree felling, such as thetree committee, are pressurized to give approvals (which they have resisted). Public consultations are bypassed by divvying up trees into lots of 45 or lesser. Trees have even been cut stealthily in the middle of the night to avoid notice, as inin 2011, and Sarjapur Road in 2012.Bengaluru’s citizens are the reasons we have any trees left – not its Government. In RV Road, Sarjapur Road, Jaymahal and Bellary Road, trees were slated for felling, but protected because of sustained protests from thousands of residents and civic groups, who took to the streets and the courts. But many other battles have been lost, in places like Hosur Road, Sankey Road, and– despite valiant efforts. In Sankey road, in 2011, protestors were even arrested for their efforts to save the city! Why should it be so hard?This is why the battle to save the four trees in the Vet Hospital is so significant for Bengaluru. Coming so soon after the victory against the steel flyover, this is a great step forward: not just for these 4 trees, but for the city’s battle for its survival. Each tree saved is a chance to change the equation between people and the Government, in favour of the environment. In favour of a better, more liveable city.It is a fight we all benefit from. In a few decades, projections indicate that cities like Bangalore will be 10°C warmer because of climate change and urban heat islands.This will have spillover effects of increased air pollution, asthma and outbreaks of epidemics. Bengaluru needs its trees, as a bulwark against urban stress.TREE POLICY NEEDEDThis is the right time for Bengaluru to call for the systematic reformation of tree policy AND process. We need to identify and work with visionary officers: and publicly call out those who create systematic obstacles, by hiding plans, bypassing approvals, stalling requests for RTIs, and taking action under the cover of night.In the 1990s, Bengaluru had an active Tree Court, with forest officers and citizen tree wardens, who met at theto examine applications from any individual or organization seeking to fell trees. Through conversation, the Tree Court could often convince people to retain trees, even to plant more trees. In 2013, BBMP planned to create an online portal to publicly record all requests for tree felling, providing a week for objections – this never materialized. We need a new Tree Court, Tree Wardens, and a Tree Committee, with a transparent process of evaluation and decision making in consultation with the public.We also need aggressive plantation. This monsoon, in an excellent initiative, concerned officers from the Forest Department are supplying saplings of native fruiting trees at nominal prices across the city. Initiatives like this are much needed from the Government’s side. Citizen groups would much rather work constructively with the State, a process that would benefit the entire city: but as the old saying goes, we cannot clap with one hand alone.This could be the wake-up call we need. Is the BBMP listening?Harini Nagendra is a Professor of Sustainability at, and author of ‘Nature in the City: Bengaluru in the Past, Present and Future’