French architect le Corbusier’s aesthetically designed Ville Verte (green city) — Chandigarh— is today witnessing rapid urbanisation resulting in environmental and ecological degradation.
The City Beautiful, which was planned for a population of five lakh people, is now bursting at the seams with nearly 11 lakh inhabitants. With rapid urbanisation, the problems of environmental degradation, urban slums, inadequate health and education facilities and poor sanitation has become formidable challenges for the city.
Also, the 16 kms periphery belt created around Chandigarh, primarily, to ensure planned development of the city is now turning into a threat to ecologically fragile zones here. As Chandigarh’s population continues to expand, the direct impact is seen in the periphery, the semi-urban areas, which are being developed in an unorganized manner resulting in non-conforming land use and defective circulation patterns.
large scale urban development, in the past one decade, by neighboring States of Punjab and Haryana in the area falling in catchment of Sukhna lake and Sukhna Wildlife Sanctuary, now poses a long-term threat to the water bodies and forest cover here.
Around 10 percent of the perimeter of Sanctuary abuts the city and the major part is along neighboring states of Punjab and Haryana. According to the UT Forests and Wildlife Department, about 4.72 percent of total area of the union territory of Chandigarh is under water bodies which includes Sukhna wetland (1.6 percent) and seasonal rivulets (3.12 percent), like Sukhna Choe, Patiala-ki-Rao, N Choe and Choe Nallah. Sukhna Wildlife Sanctuary spreading over an area of 2600 hectares is situated at 1 km in the north-east of lake.
Due to rapid commercialisation in the periphery, in the last few years, the vital habitat around Sukhna lake, the seasonal rivulets and Sanctuary has got ruined and disturbed.
As a consequence of this, the man-made water body—Sukhna lake—is marred by troubles of water scarcity, weed infestation and siltation. With construction activities continuously going on in Sukhna’s catchment, the inflow of sediments and sewage from catchment is spelling doom for the lake.
At present, the storage capacity in the lake is about 5 million cubic meters, almost one-half of 10.74 million cubic meters capacity in 1958, the year when it was created. The spread area of water in the lake has also reduced from 228.64 hectare in 1958 to around148 hectares.
Among the critical concerns, the sediments inflow from Sukhna’s catchment area, Kaimbwalla Nallah, Kansal Nallah, overland flow from Kaimbwala region, litter from the forest area towards the north into the lake were pointed out in a report of National Institute of Hydrology (NIH), Roorkee, which is roped in by UT Administration to conduct a detailed study on lake.
To revive the lake to its pristine glory, the authorities have so far engaged experts of NIH, National Botanical Research Institute and Panjab University, but a long-term comprehensive plan is yet to be laid down to save the water body from further dilapidation. The de-siltation and de-weeding operations in the lake are carried out annually but the problems persist in absence of a long-term strategy prepared by the authorities concerned.
Though the ‘Edicts of Chandigarh' prepared by Corbusier, reads "There shall be no commercial exploitation of the lake and its environment and its tranquillity shall be guaranteed by banning noises", the ever-increasing levels of air and noise pollution here is causing harm to the area now.
Not only lake, but the high degrees of constructions, high quantum of man-made encroachments, high pollution levels, are having an adverse impact on the ecology of Sukhna Reserve Forests and Sukhna Wildlife Sanctuary, in the vicinity of lake.
“Out of 150 water bodies in Sanctuary, 28 are totally silted up, 38 store only upto one meter depth of water, 36 reservoirs have storage depth between 1 to 2 meters and only 8 water bodies have good combined storage of 131.9 hectare meters,” says a report of Society for Promotion and Conservation of Environment (SPACE), which was hired by higher authorities to examine the water bodies of the sanctuary.
The Sanctuary and Sukhna Reserve Forests has a large number of avian species, Sambars and endangered species like spotted deer, porcupine, pangolin, wild pigs, cheetal.
“With the city evolving, we have find changes in avian diversity. We are not certain how much the advent of mobile towers hastened this decline but suddenly from the most common species, the house sparrow become a rarity in City Beautiful. The urbanization has also affected other birds’ species here, says, Narbir Singh, vice-president of city based Avian Habitat and Wetland Society.
The number of migratory birds reaching the city in winter has also declined considerably. While a decade back, about 10000 winged guests were reaching here annually, the number has now reduced to about 1000. AHWS 2014 waterfowl census of residents and migratory birds at lake recorded 806 water birds while more than 1500 water dependent birds were recorded in the previous year.
“The maximum damage to the avian diversity in recent years was a direct result of the removal of wetland/marsh habitat which had evolved naturally over the years near the regulator of lake. The UT Forest Department has realized this and it has set aside a small space behind the lake where such a habitat is being revived. The need of the hour, however, is to set aside a larger area, from within the forest reserve, so that while the city is evolving in keeping with the aspirations of majority population, the natural heritage is not lost,” says Narbir, who is also the part of team which is conducting a two-year long birds’ survey in forest areas here.
Professor Arun D Ahluwalia, an environmentalist and former chairman of Geology Department, Panjab University, says, “The huge quantum jump in noise levels has made life a hell for the wildlife. We often hear incidents of wild animals roaming in residential areas of tricity, but, in reality, we are the intruders into their homes and not the other way around. Huge chunks of ecologically sensitive land are now very fast being converted into townships, farm houses.”
“The day is not far when Sukhna lake will be silted to the brim because of massive deforestation and urbanization,” says Ahluwalia, who is also a member of National Advisory Committee (PAMC) on Carbon sequestration (DST Inter-sectoral Environment Panel).
The Bird Sanctuary of Chandigarh, spreading over an area of 1.8 hectares in the heart of a bustling residential area in Sector 21 here, also shares the same plight that of other forest areas due to urbanization. The Sanctuary has been a subject of intense debate due to sharp decline in Parrots’ population in the past one decade. The population of parrots inhabiting the Sanctuary was over 10000 nearly 10 years ago, but now it is around 3000. Besides Parrot, large number of Woodpeckers, Owls, Sparrows, Pigeons among others also dwell here.
“Despite the care taken to minimize noise pollution during Chandigarh’s planning through measures such as restricting the movement of heavy vehicles on internal roads, separating industrial area with green belt and dense vegetation cover among others, most of the areas now exceed the noise pollution limits,” pointed out a UT Administration’s report.
The condition of seasonal rivulets of the city is also worsening…“Several insensitive developments are taking place next to and within the choe beds both in Chandigarh and Punjab. Untreated sewerage and solid waste of Naya Gaon in Punjab and Khuda lahora and Khuda Jassu in UT is being thrown into Patiali Ki Rao. The same is happening in parts of Sukhna Choe and, even the N- Choe going through Chandigarh’s southern sectors has not been spared,” pointed out the UT’s report.
Sadly, urbanization is swallowing up the “green city” epithet of Chandigarh. Due to the lack of vision of policymakers, the water bodies and forest areas of Chandigarh continue to suffer on account of environmental changes over the years.
Santosh Kumar, Director, UT Environment Department and UT Chief wildlife warden informs, work is in progress to revive Sukhna lake and NIH has been roped in to address the problems of siltation and weed.”
“As far as Sukhna Wildlife Sanctuary and Bird Sanctuary is concerned, the eco-sensitive zone (ESZ) proposals have been prepared and have been submitted to the Union Ministry of Forests and Environment for approval,” he says.
As of now, the impact of urbanization on native species has been poorly studied and the authorities are also yet to identify the far-reaching transformations that accompany the urban sprawl in the city.
(The story is written under the aegis of a CSE fellowship)