Delhi’s ridge gets a second chance

Delhi has launched its most ambitious afforestation drive in years but it will mean little unless it is matched by cutting emissions at their source

Delhi’s ridge — the northern extension of the Aravalli hills that runs through the capital — has long been called the city’s "green lungs." This week, that metaphor was given fresh political weight when Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta planted saplings at the Central Ridge and Nanakpura Ridge to launch a campaign to plant 70 lakh trees across the capital, part of a broader push under the "Ek Ped Maa Ke Naam" initiative. The government has also launched a Green Drive Portal letting citizens book plantation slots, request free saplings and register as "Environmental Saviours," with a focus on native, long-living species such as peepal, banyan, neem, arjun and jamun, alongside plans for 100 Oxygen Parks across the city. Crucially, Shah pointed out that 7,784 hectares of the Ridge were notified under the Indian Forest Act back in 1994, but the final notification has never been issued in the three decades since — leaving much of this land legally unprotected and vulnerable to encroachment.

Now, 5,000 hectares have been designated forest area, with a promise to extend legal protection to the entire Ridge. That promise, if kept, matters more than the sapling count.It matters because Delhi’s pollution crisis is not seasonal bad luck — it is structural. Vehicular emissions contribute the largest share of the city’s local PM2.5 pollution, at over half the total, while neighbouring districts add roughly a third more through dust and industrial emissions carried in from outside Delhi’s borders. Winter brings crop-residue burning from neighbouring states, whose smoke gets trapped near the ground by temperature inversions and calm winds, producing weeks-long smog episodes. In 2025, Delhi’s annual average PM2.5 concentration touched 99.6 micrograms per cubic metre, making it the fourth most polluted city in the world — a level nearly twenty times the WHO’s safety guideline. Summers bring their own hazard, as dust storms and heatwave conditions push AQI readings past 400. This is a year-round, multi-source emergency. Given that, a plantation drive — however large — addresses only one layer of the problem. Trees absorb some particulate matter, stabilise soil, cool micro-climates and, over decades, rebuild an ecosystem that construction and encroachment have steadily eaten into. Delhi residents online have already voiced the obvious worry: past plantation drives have seen saplings die for lack of watering and follow-up care, and choosing hardy but low-value species like babool over biodiversity-rich natives has sometimes done more for optics than ecology.

A three-tier, native-species approach with dedicated maintenance — as this programme promises — is a meaningfully better design if it is followed through. But real, sustained relief requires enforcing vehicular emission standards, cleaning up industrial discharge, cutting fossil-fuel power generation, and forging real coordination with neighbouring states on crop burning. The 300 electric buses flagged off alongside the plantation drive are a start on the transport front. The Ridge deserves its legal protection and its trees. Delhi’s lungs need much more than that.