Environmental Activism by Young People - like Save Aravalli Trust

We were invited to participate with this :

25 of us cleaned a portion of sec 7 housing board colony park one morning 7.30-9 am. It was good fun. People from seven different residential areas participated in cleaning the park.

Two bags of plastics, rubber were taken out including many gutka packets. we bought the bags back to be put into garbage clearance.

Vineet of Save Aravalli Trust had organized this gathering. He is the one in a red T-shirt talking to people at the end of the clean up.

Save Aravalli Trust was started in Faridabad by the children of villagers who had monopolized rock mining for decades there. A portion of the Aravallis were thus destroyed and only after severe supreme court injunctions was the mining stopped. These educated young men want to give back to society what their parents took from it.

A chapter of the Save Aravalli Trust has been started in Bhiwadi and Vineet leads it. They all contribute their own time, money and hard work to environmental work, besides holding down full time jobs.

Sanjayji of Sec 7 Housing Colony cleaned up a large portion of the park by himself..

Mothers came with children to clean up..

Elders helped too.

As some housing board colony residents came to watch, we told them their trash, tipped over the wall into the park was likely a breeding ground for mosquitoes causing chikangunia, dengue and malaria..

The whole family, planting a bougainvillea cutting. There is a good boundary wall, but no vines covering it.

People keep jumping over the wall then, destroying it in the process. Vines play a big role in preventing such jumping over boundaries. They keep the environment cool, their woody parts store carbon di oxide, and best of all - birds find homes in them and you can enjoy bird sound.

We also planted some 20 four feet high trees and some 20 cuttings of pink bougainvillea dipped in rooting hormone.

Did you know Bangkok is predicted to largely be under water by 2030 ?

Bangkok faces a problem of skyscrapers pushing down on water-depleted soils. A study released by the city government in 2015 predicted it could be entirely underwater within 15 years. Bangkok has taken some action to preserve groundwater, such as the Ground Water Act of 1977 that restricted the amount of groundwater extracted. The city is now sinking at a slower rate than before, and water is being pumped back into the ground, but it is not enough to save the city from rising seas.

“The most rigorous solution and the best one is to stop pumping groundwater for drinking water, but then, of course, you need a new source of drinking water for these cities. But Tokyo did that and subsidence more or less stopped, and in Venice, too, they have done that."Other recommendations include the construction of a seawall to protect the greater Bangkok area from rising seas, estimated to cost 14 billion U.S. dollars.

As a demonstration for innovative ideas, an 11 acre park has been built in bangkok to collect floodwaters. The architect of this park says : “We want to re-introduce permeable surface back into the city, through a network of public green spaces projects, like small parks, urban farms, and canals. Urban porosity is critical to managing water stress in Bangkok." Another park, three times as large, is also under development.

The Park is also a welcome glimpse of grass in a metropolis that has just 3.3 sq m of green space per resident. That compares with 27 sq m in London and 66 sq m in Singapore. In fact, in the past 20 years the amount of green space in Bangkok has dropped from 40% of total land to less than 10% – exacerbating flood risk.

The city government of bangkok says it is building flood barriers and underground tunnels, and canals are being dredged and expanded. A “green zone” east of Bangkok is already used to retain water for the city. Since 2013, he says, flood concerns have been better addressed by building regulations. There must now be space for water to absorb into the ground of new-builds.

Attention was drawn to Bangkok's vulnerability after the 2011 flood event, which cost the nation US $46 billion in repairs and rehabilitation. More than 800 deaths were recorded and 13 million people were affected by the flooding.