In the Indian city of Gurgaon, one of the major satellite cities of Delhi, citizens of wasteland transformed into a green oasis. However, there will now be a six-lane highway built.
In your free time, Latika Thukral and Vasundhra Aggarwal go for a walk in your local Park, a hilly Area, covered with lush green bushes and trees.
This sounds at first glance are not unusual, but a few years ago the area was a stony desert without any Vegetation.
In 2010, more than 35,000 people and more than 70 companies joined forces to transform the approximately 154-acre area in Gurgaon, a major satellite cities of Delhi, in one of the few urban green spaces. They removed trash, planted trees, and the local administration to put footpaths through the grounds.
In the meantime, at least 180 types of birds and other animals such as civets, jackals, and deer. The Ecosystem to absorb and filter every year, more than 320 million litres of water.
“Everyone in Gurgaon has a relationship to the Park,” says Thukral, who has quit her Job as a Vice President at Citibank India, the environmental initiative “I mitzugründen at Gurgaon”.
The residents want to maintain your urban oasis, and the diversity of species in the forest
However, plans for a six-lane highway, which would extend two miles through the Eastern part of the Park, threaten the green oasis, say Thukral and other residents.
The joint project by the Indian national highway authority (NHAI) and the urban development authority, Gurgaon(GMDA) would affect about eight hectares of the forest, say the residents. They warn that this project would have an impact on the surrounding nature and noise and air pollution.
And you are angry about.
“We are all ready to leave the city, when you take us to this forest,” says Vasundhra, a local resident who helped to create the Park. “So important is this site and this place is us. He is like a Saint lung, the only green lung in Gurgaon. Therefore, we can not abandon you!”
More: Smog in New Delhi: Doctors are sounding the Alarm
More: a Good climate sought
The residents of Gurgoan have built the Park on your own – that’s why he is now an official protected area
Gurgaon has developed rapidly in recent years and has become a financial and technology center. More than 250 of the global Fortune 500 companies have either their principal place of business in India or an important office.
Since, it is hardly surprising that Gurgaon has become a sea of glass, steel and concrete; high-rise office buildings, residential towers and shopping centres for the growing population of two million people.
A Park that is strictly none taken
This has made the Park even more valuable; the local residents are protesting now regularly in the Park against the construction project. The Minister responsible for forests of the Federal state of Haryana, Narbir Singh, has promised the residents that he would work to ensure that the course of the highway around the Park.
“I’m the head of the highway authority will ask the rules of the Road. We want no loss of nature.”
But Singh has no real say in the planning and the decision, ultimately, in the case of the highway authority. For this article, NHAI did not want to comment. It was only the Considerations are not yet complete.
More: Delhi have to count due to illegal construction projects with the Floods
More: Many construction sites in Delhi’s fight against Smog
Part of the problem is that the Park is not an official city Park, and thus the protection area, but on the Initiative of local residents in self-direction has been created. Legally, the area is undesigniertes public Land. And want to take advantage of city and highway authority now, in order to combat the traffic congestion in Gurgaon. Kilometers-long traffic jams here in the traffic for the rule.
Nature versus development
Conflicts over the environment in India is nothing New. In the history of the country, there were environmental movements, especially in communities that have lived traditionally in the woods and against development projects and restrictive forest laws from the colonial period to the military.
This Tradition gained momentum in the 1970s, the Chipko movement. At the time, defended indigenous women in Uttarakhand, a state in Northern India, their rights to trees to protect them from deforestation.
The government says it wants to prevent by using the new motorway jams like this
And thanks to the breakneck development and sudden growth of the urban population throughout the country, this struggle has now reached the cities. Conflicts between development and environmental protection are not only in Gurgaon but also in other Parts of Delhi, as well as in other major cities such as Mumbai or Bangalore.
More: At a crossroads between further development and protection of the environment
More: The Smog – New Delhi, the new main opponent
Zain Khan, architect at sustainable architecture office SKDAS, rejects the construction of the new highway. He believes that it is possible to promote urban development without destroying the environment.
“We don’t need to be constantly in conflict. And I don’t think that anyone will mind to drive 15 minutes longer car to drive around for a few miles, and a forest, if you for in the long term, something meaningful.”
Shyam Kumar, a local lawyer who is also opposed to the project, is less conciliatory: “It is ridiculous. It is at best indifference and at worst a state of arrogance. In this Park a lot of heart flowed blood and it will be a great loss if this highway is driven by.”
But even the protesters, local residents know that protest marches are not enough posters, maybe, to stop the construction. Prepare for a long fight. In a pinch, you want to draw to court, in order to save their forest.
-
Europe’s most beautiful Parks and gardensThe green thumb of Europe
England is a garden-mad Nation. Each summer in London and other cities in England and Wales, hundreds of individuals of their gardens to the Public. Often Mr. and Mrs. Smith serve – the proverbial people-next-door – also tea and cake. The proceeds from a couple of pound entrance fee and the food goes to a good cause. The idea has spread throughout Europe.
-
Europe’s most beautiful Parks and gardensCranbrook – Sissinghurst Castle
Sissinghurst Castle in Kent is one of the most famous gardens in England. In 1930, it created the writer Vita Sackville-West and her husband have a garden that is today style. In the ten garden rooms combine elegant sensuality, and the form strict. Famous is the “White garden”. Sackville also wanted to be able night recognize your flowers.
-
Europe’s most beautiful Parks and gardensVersailles – The Castle Park
The Palace of Versailles is one of the largest palaces in Europe. Be a Baroque garden, it was a monarch model for many other European monarchs. André Le Nôtre, the gardener of Louis XIV, is one of the most important landscape gardeners of all time. Versailles, his life’s work. The strict forms to symbolize the Triumph of man over unruly nature. A green Monument of Power.
-
Europe’s most beautiful Parks and gardensVillandry – garden art in the Loire valley
He is one of the most visited gardens in France – the garden of the Renaissance castle of Villandry in the Loire valley, the “garden of France”. He was born in 1906, as a natural, close to Park, school. But the Idol of the owner of the masters of the form, André le Nôtre. Flower and vegetable beds, add three levels to precisely color-matched to a geometric mosaic.
-
Europe’s most beautiful Parks and gardensHannover – Herrenhausen Gardens
The historical heart of the manors of the Large garden is gardens. It is the only original preserved Baroque green plant in Germany. She survived only because of Hanover’s kings not to have your garden looked after. As they ruled from 1714 -1823 in England, they saved at home in Germany. And while elsewhere nature created near the landscape gardens, which have remained in Hannover.
-
Europe’s most beautiful Parks and gardensRome – Villa d’este
Italy was a pioneer in the design of gardens, decorated to a luxurious estate in the country. The gardens of the Villa d’este in Rome in the 16th century. Century created. A typical Element of Renaissance gardens are the water features. One of the attractions of the Villa d’este, the Avenue of the hundred fountains. The garden of the Villa d’este is since 2001 a UNESCO world heritage site.
-
Europe’s most beautiful Parks and gardensPotsdam – palaces and gardens
A landscape gardener who never had a private garden, was one of the most productive gardeners of his time. Peter Joseph Lenné. For 50 years he served in the Royal Prussian court, from 1816 until his death in 1866. His style: long-range Park facilities with sophisticated visual axes. The Park of the Sanssouci Palace, which he extended and remodeled, and is today a UNESCO world heritage site.
-
Europe’s most beautiful Parks and gardensDessau-Wörlitz The Garden Kingdom Of
Leopold Franz of Anhalt-Dessau created in the 18th century Prince. Century on the Banks of the Elbe river, a Park landscape in the style of an English garden. Open to all subjects – this was revolutionary. He integrated natural and artificial water courses, scenic points, Islands, views, axes, sculptures, and architecture. Is a total work of art, its understated elegance has always fascinated.
-
Europe’s most beautiful Parks and gardensGiverny – Monet’s garden
Painters have a special knack for gardens. Over 500,000 people a year travel to Normandy to see this garden. The impressionist painter Claude Monet lived and worked in his country house in Giverny. The garden was his and Everything. He bought constantly adding new plants, up from Giverny a colourful “jungle” was. The Lily pond is his most famous subject.
-
Europe’s most beautiful Parks and gardensEverywhere, Urban Gardening
Representative now to be a garden and more. Fun he has to make. Around the globe garden projects to enrich the cities. Also on the disused Tempelhof airport in Berlin has established an Urban Gardening project. A colorful garden made of raised beds, creative from the simplest of materials cobbled together. An oasis in the big city – always open for visitors.