Once we image cities, we have a tendency to think about flyovers, roads, and high-rises. However as local weather dangers similar to heatwaves, flooding, and air air pollution intensify, it’s the ignored belongings of parks, lakes, and wetlands, often called blue-green infrastructure, that might decide whether or not our cities stay habitable. Nonetheless, unchecked and fast urbanisation is steadily eroding these pure buffers, leaving our cities extra uncovered than ever.
On this interview, Jaya Dhindaw, govt programme director for the Sustainable Cities programme at WRI India, explains why blue-green infrastructure should be considered not as a luxurious however as an integral part of city planning and design. She additionally discusses why planning and coverage typically overlook such infrastructure, regardless of its numerous advantages, and delves into the vital position that citizen demand, group stewardship, and interdepartmental collaboration can play within the creation and preservation of blue-green areas.
Every year we hear about temperatures rising and new local weather thresholds being crossed. In that context, why are blue-green areas changing into so vital for cities?
Jaya: Blue-green infrastructure, which incorporates every part from parks and tree-lined streets to wetlands and water our bodies, performs a key position in strengthening local weather resilience. In cities particularly, it helps average hyperlocal temperatures, scale back the city warmth island impact, and supply shade and thermal consolation throughout heatwaves. From an ecological standpoint, it helps city biodiversity, absorbs rainwater, and helps mitigate floods.
Whereas these advantages are pretty properly documented, what doesn’t get spoken about sufficient is how these areas intersect with the lives of people who find themselves most susceptible to excessive climate occasions in cities: avenue distributors, building staff, supply personnel, and daily-wage earners. In city India, the place greater than 80 % of the workforce is casual, tens of millions of individuals spend most of their day outdoor. For them, blue-green areas aren’t simply ‘good to have’—they’re important websites of relaxation, shade, and restoration. These areas additionally contribute to raised air, psychological well being, bodily well-being, and total high quality of life. In different phrases, they create more healthy environments for everybody, whereas providing crucial safeguards for individuals who want them most.
For susceptible teams which have the least social and financial security nets, and have contributed the least to the local weather disaster, blue-green areas typically change into a vital line of defence in opposition to local weather shocks. But their wants are hardly ever positioned on the centre of how cities are deliberate or who they’re deliberate for. Local weather and concrete planning, because it stands, typically disregards the on a regular basis realities of people that spend most of their lives outdoor. Nonetheless, if we’re severe about equitable and resilient cities, we will’t ignore this intersection when speaking concerning the essential position of blue-green infrastructure.
You talked about the well being advantages that blue-green areas can supply. But this linkage doesn’t appear to function strongly in planning or coverage discussions. Why do you suppose that’s?
Jaya: There may be definitely a scarcity of dialog on that entrance. However there may be rising proof that blue-green areas do have a profound influence on public well being, each bodily and psychological. For instance, entry to pure areas is related to decrease charges of cardiovascular illnesses, improved respiratory operate, and higher little one well being outcomes.
Moreover, the World Well being Group and the Nationwide Institute of Well being have shared proof on how entry to pure areas can result in higher psychological well being outcomes and scale back melancholy, anxiousness, and stress.
This turns into much more important in low-income neighbourhoods, the place building high quality is poor and the supplies used are sometimes extremely heat-absorbent, so the properties themselves can change into warmth traps. On high of that, a big share of casual staff spends most of their time outdoor, which makes entry to shade and funky resting spots very important for his or her well being.
There’s one other dimension right here too. In low-income communities, blue-green areas aren’t nearly cooling or bodily well being–additionally they allow social cohesion. They change into areas the place individuals can collect, assist each other, and construct group, which in flip reduces stress and isolation.
I feel there are two most important causes that blue–inexperienced areas are hardly ever recognised as vital public well being infrastructure in India.
Blue-green areas are seen as a luxurious moderately than as very important infrastructure.
One is that our authorities departments typically find yourself working in siloes. The ministries of well being, atmosphere, and concrete improvement don’t collaborate with one another meaningfully to plot options that supply a number of advantages throughout the board. Planting a tree, for instance, isn’t just beautification. It improves air high quality, reduces warmth stress, contributes to raised well being outcomes, and even will increase the worth of land within the space. However as a result of departments don’t work collectively, it will get diminished to this single-purpose train. And when there’s no effort to quantify the well being advantages or the preventative advantages, it doesn’t get the political consideration it deserves.
And more and more, it’s clear that when contemplating mandates that require interdepartmental collaboration, the issues that don’t fall neatly inside a single division’s scope are the primary to get sidelined. Collaboration sounds good in principle, however in follow it’s typically seen as idealistic, too tough, and fraught with questions similar to ‘who funds what?’. The second you want a number of departments or businesses to come back collectively, it tends to fall by the wayside, and we don’t see actual motion.
The second is the lack of expertise round why these interventions matter. Blue-green areas are nonetheless seen as a luxurious moderately than as very important infrastructure. What’s lacking is proof that makes the case for why blue-green areas are invaluable, each within the lengthy and quick time period.
Why do you suppose city planning nonetheless misses the mark in the case of incorporating blue-green infrastructure?
Jaya: The underlying downside is that there isn’t sufficient planning within the first place. As Tier-II and Tier-III cities and even metropolitan cities develop, a lot of their development is unplanned. This makes it extraordinarily difficult to guard, improve, or create public inexperienced areas. This unchecked spatial development—pushed by short-term actual property pressures, contestations over land use, and weak enforcement of land-use laws, even the place grasp plans exist—signifies that inexperienced infrastructure is commonly the primary to be encroached upon. In case you map cities from the Nineteen Nineties to 2020, the pattern is unmistakable: shrinking inexperienced cowl and widespread ecological degradation.
Policymakers are continuously having to weigh what is going to give extra rapid, seen advantages. And in that equation, blue-green areas typically change into the final precedence. The Mumbai Coastal Highway is one instance, and comparable tensions exist in virtually each metropolis in India. There may be immense stress over how this restricted house ought to be used and who will get to outline the general public good. Ought to a coastal route take priority, or ought to blue-green infrastructure be prioritised? Is enabling motion extra vital, or offering entry to inexperienced areas? These are questions each metropolis grapples with, emphasising the necessity for communities, governments, and civil society to come back collectively and make the case for these areas as important infrastructure.
However the buck doesn’t simply cease with policymakers or planners. Residents have to display a higher demand for blue-green areas as properly. Whereas individuals profit from cooler neighbourhoods, diminished flood threat, higher air high quality, and improved well being, these benefits aren’t all the time recognised as linked to inexperienced areas. Ask somebody whether or not they’d choose a mall or a park, and lots of will decide the mall as a result of it’s perceived to spice up property values and jobs. With minimal citizen demand, inexperienced infrastructure turns into politically insignificant.
The result’s what we’ve seen earlier than and what we’re seeing round us: Restoring, constructing, or planning for blue-green infrastructure hardly ever makes it into election manifestos. When metropolis agendas are framed, we would hear ‘let’s decongest town’ or ‘let’s construct flyovers’, however inexperienced infrastructure hardly ever options as a vital political challenge, regardless of its long-term advantages.
The influence of this has been grave. In WRI India’s research titled City Blue-Inexperienced Conundrum, we discovered that in India’s 10 most populated cities, city improvement has contributed to diminished groundwater infiltration, rainwater run-off, and blue and inexperienced cowl. Bengaluru, for instance, has misplaced greater than 103 sq. kilometres of floor water between 2000 and 2015.
So how can we keep away from repeating the identical errors, particularly as rising cities are quickly urbanising? How can we be certain that city planning integrates blue-green infrastructure from the beginning?
Jaya: The options have to emerge on a number of fronts.
1. Accountability: Institutional accountability and planning reforms are crucial, particularly in smaller and mid-sized cities which can be quickly increasing. As a substitute of simply reacting to encroachments, we want proactive safety and enforceable spatial planning that recognises blue-green belongings as vital infrastructure. This requires greater than token grasp plans. What we want are regional frameworks that put individuals on the centre, permit for versatile land use, are rooted in environmental issues, and are up to date frequently. Utilizing instruments similar to GIS mapping and finding out the capability of an space to deal with improvement can information higher planning and assist defend fragile ecosystems. And if fast-growing city areas construct in these safeguards early, they’ll set the course for extra sustainable, accountable cities.
2. Communication: Prioritising communication is vital. We have to use information, visible storytelling, and even common instruments similar to WhatsApp to make the co-benefits of blue-green areas tangible—whether or not it’s lowering well being expenditure, cooling neighbourhoods, reducing vitality payments, and even elevating property values. Apparently, there are hardly any research in India that may assist shift perceptions by linking property values to the presence of parks or open areas. Tutorial establishments play a vital position by producing proof that highlights why these areas matter, and such proof will help drive citizen demand.
3. Funding: Cities want each mandates and funding to take care of ecological belongings. Nonetheless, blue-green initiatives, particularly in city areas, are typically small-scale, so until they’re aggregated, executing them as one-offs will be inefficient. A government-led fund or facility that may consolidate these initiatives turns into important.
As an example, local weather motion plans in each Mumbai and Bangalore already discuss funding and financing mechanisms in addition to governance buildings that must be in place. Local weather motion cells have been created in each cities, and the Mumbai local weather funds outlines how actions throughout numerous departments will be higher aligned with local weather goals. One other instance in Mumbai is that of the gardens division, which is engaged on a nature fund to maneuver past piecemeal clean-ups in direction of systemic safety and restoration of landscapes.
4. Connection: Bringing numerous actors collectively so that everybody is pushing in the identical course could be a problem. This contains aligning non-public pursuits, like that of actual property builders, with town’s targets, thus creating incentives moderately than penalties so builders see worth in integrating blue-green infrastructure. It additionally entails making certain that authorities goals and citizen wants are coordinated.
Organisations like ours, performing as interlocutors, play a key position. We function system orchestrators—surfacing issues, presenting resolution choices, and connecting numerous stakeholders to allow coordinated motion. For instance, in our work on nature-based options in Mumbai, we created a sandbox for piloting and testing revolutionary options.
Extra importantly, we convened the whole ecosystem of resolution suppliers, communities, funders, and authorities to have interaction in dialogue and co-create interventions. This method allowed us to generate sturdy proof, which in flip enabled these pilots to be mainstreamed and scaled by means of municipal programmes.
A bridging position can thus assist de-risk innovation, align incentives, and create the situations for concepts to maneuver from small-scale experiments to systemic change.
5. Coverage: Present programmes and insurance policies will be meaningfully leveraged or replicated as properly. As a part of the Good Cities Mission, many cities throughout India have engaged in public house interventions. One such instance is Kochi’s Kawaki initiative, beneath which greater than 1,200 native tree saplings have been planted to assist restore city groves—safeguarding in opposition to the chance of city warmth islands and flash floods. The initiative was funded by the funds allotted to nature-based options by the Kochi Municipal Company. Moreover, the challenge leveraged the Ayyankali City Employment Assure Scheme, recruiting ladies staff who have been compensated by means of the scheme to take care of the websites.
You’ve talked about citizen demand as a key driver. Might you elaborate on how communities will be engaged to create and maintain blue-green areas?
Jaya: Citizen demand could be a highly effective driver for change, however it comes with each alternatives and challenges. In states similar to Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, and Maharashtra, robust citizen voices have efficiently prompted enhancements in public areas. Grassroots organisations just like the Mahila Housing Belief and tutorial establishments similar to Tata Institute of Social Sciences have been instrumental in producing consciousness and mobilising communities.
Stewardship emphasises collective duty in sustaining areas for the broader group.
A notable lesson from profitable circumstances, just like the East Kolkata Wetlands, is the significance of linking environmental interventions to financial advantages for the local people. In Kolkata, incentives for fisheries helped the encompassing group see clear worth in conserving the wetlands, which inspired long-term engagement.
It’s additionally vital to differentiate between possession and stewardship. When communities improve public areas, generally these areas change into ‘privatised’, gated, or restricted, whereby sure residents imagine that entry to the world ought to be restricted, which undermines its public objective. Stewardship, alternatively, emphasises collective duty in sustaining areas for the broader group. It encourages a way of accountability moderately than unique possession, fostering actions for the bigger public good.
Sensible engagement instruments could make an actual distinction. For instance, in Kochi and Mumbai, we’ve performed mapathon workouts, involving native communities to assist establish derelict lands appropriate for brand spanking new inexperienced infrastructure. By together with them in planning and figuring out these areas, we have been capable of create curiosity and accountability. On the metropolis stage, handbooks like Greening Mumbai present a framework for interventions at a number of ranges—plot, neighbourhood, avenue, and metropolis. This helps communities perceive their position as custodians of house.
What are your hopes for the way forward for blue-green areas in Indian cities?
Jaya: The shift I’d hope for is that blue-green areas, or public areas extra broadly, change into a central and non-negotiable a part of city planning conversations. Once we are questions like the place improvement ought to happen, or conducting land suitability analyses in grasp plans, there should be a deal with engendering the sanctity of blue-green areas. This implies clear demarcation, enforcement, and public devices to make sure the upkeep of those areas in addition to their integrity. On the similar time, communities ought to perceive their position as stewards of those areas—acknowledging their significance in safeguarding public well being; of their leisure use by youngsters and the aged; and in providing dignity, delight, and a way of belonging within the metropolis.
I additionally suppose it’s essential to deliver this dialog again to susceptible and low-income communities. Once we plan for primary infrastructure similar to sanitation, water, and housing, we hardly ever take into consideration entry to blue-green areas. But these are important facilities, particularly in dense, low-income neighbourhoods. Integrating the entry to inexperienced and blue infrastructure into planning for these communities will help create extra equitable cities.
A easy reframe in our collective creativeness of blue-green areas can generate accountability, political salience, and funding, which might then be mirrored in formal planning processes. Creating, restoring, and conserving blue-green areas can yield a number of advantages—lowering emissions, enhancing fairness, bettering liveability, and addressing the intertwined wants of individuals, nature, and local weather. If we will catalyse a motion round blue-green infrastructure in cities, the optimistic transformations for each individuals and the atmosphere could possibly be profound.
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Know extra
- Hearken to this episode of On The Opposite on constructing habitable cities.
- Watch this video on the design of flood-resistant cities.
- Learn this text on rethinking how cities are constructed to face up to monsoons.
