Deforestation and pollution have become a serious trouble and are even more of a concern in big cities with the air quality being constantly deteriorated by the fumes from vehicles and industries. And while the pollution is increasing, the green cover required to combat is decreasing, mainly to clear space for human settlement. Hence, our cities are turning into concrete jungles with the quality of air decreasing, thus increasing the chance of a variety of diseases. To combat this a new idea has been developed by builders and architects around the world, Vertical Forest or a Treescraper! It consists of a building which is based on an integration of modern architecture along with planting of trees and plants to create a green space.
The Vertical Forest has trees and plants to absorb Carbon Dioxide and Suspended Particulate Matter(SPM), which helps in reducing smog while creating a buffer to dampen the noise pollution, and are believed to lessen the heating effect around the building and in the area nearby because of transpiration from the trees and plants thus providing a cool environment upto an extent which translates to lesser energy consumption. A single building can be beneficial for the surrounding area, and in the current scenario where demands for space is growing, this can be a healthy compromise between sustainability and productivity.
Following the concept, Italian firm Stefano Boeri Architetti designed a Vertical Forest building which has won them multiple innovation and design awards, like second place in Emporis Skyscraper Award and also came first in the Best Tall Building Worldwide, decided by a jury from The Council on Tall Buildings And Urban Habitat. What makes this so special is that the treescrapers beat some great iconic buildings like 1 World Trade Center, NYC. This does mark the change in perception and want for sustainable and environment friendly buildings.
According to the designer and architect Stefano Boeri, the added greenery serves as a way to redefine the urban space. In his own words, “It is a model of vertical densification of nature within the city.” And it can be considered dense, as the two Vertical Forest towers, one 256-foot and the other 344-foot, are covered from top to bottom by more than 700 trees and 90 species of plants. For perspective, if all the trees and plants were planted on a single piece of land, the forest will take an area of about two acres more or less.
And now with China’s announcement that it will be using the services of Stefano Boeri to build at least two Vertical Forest towers in Nanjing to combat the worrisome air pollution present in China. The project has an estimated completion time of 2018 and initial reports suggest that each building will be able to absorb upto 25 kg of Carbon Dioxide and give out 60 kgs of Oxygen in a year.
Arun Swaminathan, Bengaluru based Environment Architect and Academician said, “Creating vertical gardens is the need of the hour in India. Particularly architects, engineers and developers and political leaders, of course, should look at green buildings as an alternative. It starts from your balcony itself. At the same time, we should keep planting more trees because there is no replacement for trees .”
With such announcements coming from around the world, it remains to be seen if a similar model of Vertical Forest can be built in our metropolitans, namely Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru where pollution is wreaking havoc. However the high cost of developing may not deem it as a profitable venture for our debt ridden developers who try every antic to decrease the cost, Also to make a considerable effect in the pollution levels around the cities, quite a few of these buildings will need to be designed, and with their set of challenges to work upon.
Durgesh Agrahari, head of partnerships and projects at Bengaluru based SayTrees Environmental Trust said,”It is one way of creating vertical gardens. In India, another way is to create gardens around flyover pillars. Shrubs and bushes which also act as dust absorbents will be used. It will also clean the environment. We do not have much space in cities and old trees are being cut across the country. To ensure a green cover in the city itself, we would focus on walls of buildings and pillars. However, initial costs of installation would be expensive but it is worth it”
Hence this project may not see the light of the day in a few years in our cities. However let’s hope for a greener future for that is the only sustainable way in long run!
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Steve Ovett, the famous British middle-distance athlete, won the 800-metres gold medal at the Moscow Olympics of 1980. Just a few days later, he was about to win a 5,000-metres race at London’s Crystal Palace. Known for his burst of acceleration on the home stretch, he had supreme confidence in his ability to out-sprint rivals. With the final 100 metres remaining,
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]Ovett waved to the crowd and raised a hand in triumph. But he had celebrated a bit too early. At the finishing line, Ireland’s John Treacy edged past Ovett. For those few moments, Ovett had lost his sense of reality and ignored the possibility of a negative event.
This analogy works well for the India story and our policy failures , including during the ongoing covid pandemic. While we have never been as well prepared or had significant successes in terms of growth stability as Ovett did in his illustrious running career, we tend to celebrate too early. Indeed, we have done so many times before.
It is as if we’re convinced that India is destined for greater heights, come what may, and so we never run through the finish line. Do we and our policymakers suffer from a collective optimism bias, which, as the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman once wrote, “may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases”? The optimism bias arises from mistaken beliefs which form expectations that are better than the reality. It makes us underestimate chances of a negative outcome and ignore warnings repeatedly.
The Indian economy had a dream run for five years from 2003-04 to 2007-08, with an average annual growth rate of around 9%. Many believed that India was on its way to clocking consistent double-digit growth and comparisons with China were rife. It was conveniently overlooked that this output expansion had come mainly came from a few sectors: automobiles, telecom and business services.
Indians were made to believe that we could sprint without high-quality education, healthcare, infrastructure or banking sectors, which form the backbone of any stable economy. The plan was to build them as we went along, but then in the euphoria of short-term success, it got lost.
India’s exports of goods grew from $20 billion in 1990-91 to over $310 billion in 2019-20. Looking at these absolute figures it would seem as if India has arrived on the world stage. However, India’s share of global trade has moved up only marginally. Even now, the country accounts for less than 2% of the world’s goods exports.
More importantly, hidden behind this performance was the role played by one sector that should have never made it to India’s list of exports—refined petroleum. The share of refined petroleum exports in India’s goods exports increased from 1.4% in 1996-97 to over 18% in 2011-12.
An import-intensive sector with low labour intensity, exports of refined petroleum zoomed because of the then policy regime of a retail price ceiling on petroleum products in the domestic market. While we have done well in the export of services, our share is still less than 4% of world exports.
India seemed to emerge from the 2008 global financial crisis relatively unscathed. But, a temporary demand push had played a role in the revival—the incomes of many households, both rural and urban, had shot up. Fiscal stimulus to the rural economy and implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission scales had led to the salaries of around 20% of organized-sector employees jumping up. We celebrated, but once again, neither did we resolve the crisis brewing elsewhere in India’s banking sector, nor did we improve our capacity for healthcare or quality education.
Employment saw little economy-wide growth in our boom years. Manufacturing jobs, if anything, shrank. But we continued to celebrate. Youth flocked to low-productivity service-sector jobs, such as those in hotels and restaurants, security and other services. The dependence on such jobs on one hand and high-skilled services on the other was bound to make Indian society more unequal.
And then, there is agriculture, an elephant in the room. If and when farm-sector reforms get implemented, celebrations would once again be premature. The vast majority of India’s farmers have small plots of land, and though these farms are at least as productive as larger ones, net absolute incomes from small plots can only be meagre.
A further rise in farm productivity and consequent increase in supply, if not matched by a demand rise, especially with access to export markets, would result in downward pressure on market prices for farm produce and a further decline in the net incomes of small farmers.
We should learn from what John Treacy did right. He didn’t give up, and pushed for the finish line like it was his only chance at winning. Treacy had years of long-distance practice. The same goes for our economy. A long grind is required to build up its base before we can win and celebrate. And Ovett did not blame anyone for his loss. We play the blame game. Everyone else, right from China and the US to ‘greedy corporates’, seems to be responsible for our failures.
We have lowered absolute poverty levels and had technology-based successes like Aadhaar and digital access to public services. But there are no short cuts to good quality and adequate healthcare and education services. We must remain optimistic but stay firmly away from the optimism bias.
In the end, it is not about how we start, but how we finish. The disastrous second wave of covid and our inability to manage it is a ghastly reminder of this fact.