Brown to green, a story of hope

How do you restore 448 sq km of land ravaged by careless mining to something worthy of India’s national capital region? Like the Asola mines, our city too can restore its damaged Aravali Hills. If we do, it could change our life, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: May 10, 2009, 24:55:06 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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How do you restore 448 sq km of land ravaged by careless mining to something worthy of India’s national capital region?

As officials ponder that question after the Supreme Court on Friday banned mining in the Aravali Hills around Delhi, they have to look no further than the former mines of Asola-Bhatti: Once a series of ugly brown gashes, now a sylvan sprawl in south Delhi.

It's taken just 10 years to restore these mines, a 30-minute drive from Faridabad, Gurga areas where the Supreme Court order is applicable.

Experts said “precise ecological interventions” could restore the Aravali Hill Range, a green corridor till 1980s, and a natural filter for hot winds blowing in from Rajasthan. “If Aravali gets (back) its glory it would have a definite impact on lowering of Delhi’s average temperature,” said G B Pant, former director of Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune.
And if Delhi really gets creative, the Aravalis could become a nature reserve, complete with hiking paths and eco trails.
How can the Aravalis get their green back?

It doesn't need lots of money. But it does need a dedicated team of scientists and lots of local support.“At a cost of Rs 70,000 to Rs 80,000 per acre, the Aravali hills can look like they did 20-30 years,” said C.R. Babu, Professor Emeritus at Delhi University's School for Environment Studies.

Babu has given new ecological life to several degraded mines in India, including the Mussoorie (limestone) mines in Uttarkhand, which the Supreme Court in the early 1980s had cited in invoking Article 21 of the Constitution (the right to life), as it did in the Aravali case on Friday.

Barren to bountiful
For more than 150 years, Asola-Bhatti mines were Delhi’s main source of morrum, a red sand popularly known as Badarpur and used in construction, till the ban on digging in the late 1990s. It now comes from Aravali in Haryana.

It took scientists from DU more than a year to rejuvenate the soil, using legumes, plants that trap atmospheric nitrogen dioxide and convert it to nitrogen. It is this nitrogen that lets grass grow.

As the soil quality improved, native species returned—1,200 plant species, more than 110 species of birds and 72 species of butterflies.

Only, the Asola-Bhatti is two acres: the job across the degraded Aravalis is huge at 448 sq km, about the third the area of Delhi.“Experience from ecological restoration of limestone mines in Uttarakhand has shown there are proven scientific techniques to ensure return of biodioversity in huge tracts of barren land,” said Fayaz Khudsar, an environmentalist who has worked in the degraded Chambal Hills.

“It’s more than just planting trees. One has to understand local ecological needs and act accordingly,” said Babu. He's credited with developing two bio-diversity parks in Delhi—at Burari and Vasant Kunj. If only he can rework his magic.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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