Delhi's first dense 'urban forest' in the heart of polluted ITO

Delhi to have its first Dense 'Urban Forest' in the heart of Pollution at ITO

BY Vijay Thakur, Special Representative, The Statesman, vijaythakurx@gmail.com

In a unique initiative to develop 'Super Dense' greenery in the heart of Delhi’s most polluted ITO area, Government has developed an amazing “Urban Forest” in the office complex of Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) that would not only act as an ‘Oxygen Bank’ but would also bring down the temperature of the complex by as low as 14 degree Celsius.

If Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadkar is to be believed the 'Super Dense' ‘Urban Forest’, 30 times dense than a normal forest, would need minimal maintenance and would be self-sustainable by October 2021. The forest will have 12,000 saplings of 59 native species in just one acre of land. The Minister further claimed that it could help in reducing the temperature by as much as 14 degrees and increase the moisture by more than 40%.

The samplings would be accommodated in such a small space through three dimensional, multi-layered plantations having 30 times the surface area of the greenery of single-layered lawns, the Environment Ministry claimed. It would also have 30 times more ability to protect against natural disasters to conserve the environment, the Minister claimed, the Ministry added.

The idea behind this dense urban forest was to create a natural Oxygen bank and Carbon Sink in areas where pollution has reached a dangerous level. The pollution level has already reached at the dangerous level at the ITO crossing, which is nearby to the CAG complex. Since there was hardly any space available for greenery, the government adopted the Miyawaki method of forest creation. The 92-year-old Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki had developed this technique in 1970 when he developed a first is a unique 'Super Dense Urban Forest' in Japan in which trees grew 10 times faster and 30 times denser than usual. As per his technique, within three years of little maintenance, the area can be converted into a ‘Super Dense Jungle’. Thereafter it would hardly need any maintenance except some brief spell of watering that too very rarely.

This would be Delhi’s first dense urban forest with multiple tree layers including 12,000 saplings of 59 indigenous species in just 1 acre of size. Once this becomes a dense forest it would have its own ecosystem with the capacity to restore habitat for birds, bees, butterflies and microfauna. These are essential for pollination of crops and fruits and to help maintain a balanced ecosystem. The multi-layered forest has shrubs, small to medium-size trees and tall trees carefully arranged as peripheral and core plant communities. After it becomes a dense jungle, it would not need much maintenance.

Some of the rare native species planted here include Anogeissus pendula (Dhonk), Diospyros cordifolia (Bistendu), Ehretia laevis (chamrod), Wrightia tinctoria (Doodhi), Mitragyna parvifolia (Kaim), Butea monosperma (Palash), Prosopis cineraria (Khejri), Clerodendrum phlomidis(Arni), Grewia asiatica (Falsa), Phoenix sylvestris (Khajoor) and Helicteres isora (Marodphali). The species selected are part of Delhi’s potential natural vegetation and are best suited to the region’s terrain, climate and soil.

“The urban forest sends out and the action-oriented message of bringing back lost environmental protection forests. In-depth field surveys of potential natural vegetation, well-planned native species’ propagation and restoration projects like these are the need of the hour,” the Minister said. 

Urban Forest

An urban forest is the one that within a city or town, normally it include vegetation growing in and around human settlements. As opposed to a forest park, whose ecosystems are also inherited from wilderness leftovers, urban forests often lack amenities like public bathrooms paved paths, or sometimes clear borders which are distinct features of parks.

Urban forests play an important role in the ecology of human habitats in many ways. Aside from the beautification of the urban environment, they offer many benefits like impacting climate and the economy while providing shelter to wildlife and recreational area for city dwellers

About: Akira Mayawaki

Akira Mayawaki, 92, is a Japanese botanist and expert in plant ecology. He is specialized in seeds and the study of natural forests. He is active worldwide as a specialist in the restoration of the natural vegetation on degraded land. Since 1993, he has been Professor Emeritus at Yokohama National University and Director of the Japanese Center for International Studies in Ecology. He received the Blue Planet award in 2006.

He studied the concept of potential natural vegetation (PNV) in Germany and developed a refined method of ecological engineering to restore natural forests from seeds of native trees in very degraded soils (with hardly has any humus). His method was praised world over and now known as the "Miyawaki method". Using ecological theories and the results of his experiments, he quickly and successfully restored, sometimes over large areas, protective forests (disaster-prevention, environment-conservation and water-source-protection forests) at over 1,700 sites in Japan and various tropical countries in the form of shelterbelts, woodlands and woodlots, including urban, port and industrial areas.

Although most experts believe that rapid restoration of a forest is impossible or very difficult on a laterized and desertified soil following the destruction of the rainforest, Miyawaki showed that rapid restoration of forest cover and restoration of soil was possible by using a judicious choice of pioneer and secondary indigenous species, densely planted and mycorrhized. After studying local plant ecology, he uses the species that have key and complementary roles in the normal tree community.

He alone has been involved in planting over 40 million native trees. The Miyawaki method of reconstitution of "indigenous forests by indigenous trees" produces a rich, dense and efficient protective pioneer forest in 20 to 30 years, whereas natural succession would need 200 years in temperate Japan and 300 to 500 years in the tropics.

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