With only one-and-a-half year remaining, the target to achieve 21% green cover in the master plan seems like a distant dream for the city authority. The city was noted to have 13% green cover in 1982, when the decision to bring up the green cover to 21% was taken up initially. Raising concern over the lack of green cover and the grand challenge of bringing up the number of trees to increase the green cover from 1.25 lakh to over 42 lakh, city’s watchdog Kishore Kodwani met with Indore Municipal Corporation (IMC) commissioner Asheesh Singh.
“NGT (National Green Tribunal Act) had undertaken a pre-screening last year, whose report showed that Indore has overall 1.25 lakh trees including every tree planted in government institutions, educational institutions, roadside plantations by IDA and IMC, etc.” Kodwani said. Based on this, the green cover is likely to be reducing than increasing. “According to calculations, we have a long way to go and the simplest way to understand the minimum number of trees we need is to know our population,” Kodwani said.
He noted that a number of trees at least need to equal our population for the required green cover. “The green cover includes only large trees that give canopy coverage, so it is not essential about the land required for them, but more on the number planted in green lanes, houses, offices and everywhere in the city,” Kodwani said. Further, he talked about the number of gardens in the city.
“Currently, according to IMC records we have 1,056 gardens in the city, whereas we must have over 2,000 gardens,” Kodwani said. On discussing these matters with the commissioner, Kodwani claimed that IMC will be collecting the data about the total number of gardens as the first step and will be compiling a new record.
