Climate change-related extreme weather events may not come to an end but the urban planner's efforts in making Indian cities resilient will help them bounce back after inevitable disasters
Climate change has become an everyday reality for mankind. The ill-effects of punishing changes in the environment have already taken a toll on a variety of aspects such as thinning of our forest cover or rapidly rising sea levels, which are in turn threatening our coastal areas. On the other hand, the vanishing green canopy has been instrumental in increasing the ambient temperatures. These have led to a scenario where limiting the global temperature rise to below 2 degree centigrade seems like an unachievable goal now. As the world is locked in an irrecoverable downward spiral towards a definite and permanent climate change, humans residing in rural and urban areas are poised to take the maximum hit.
Whereas the rural areas are expected to get off lightly, thanks to their proximity to nature, they are not likely to get off as easily on the agricultural front where climate change is expected to hit food production immensely. To state that the farmers of India are looking at a dark future, both financially and agriculturally, would not be incorrect.
Their city counterparts are not going to fare better either, thanks to unstoppable migration to cities from rural hinterlands and the groaning infrastructure that is already bursting at seams, unable to provide for even basic amenities such as power, water and accommodation. To make matters worse is the fact that green cover in many Indian cities has virtually disappeared amid the growing problem of increasing population.
Scientific opinion is also now unanimously certain that global temperatures are likely to continue to rise with concomitant extreme weather patterns and events. There is a protean body of scientific literature available on global warming and climate change, which is affecting urban living in every respect, from the impact of heat islands phenomena. Urban planning implications are reflected in buildings, street and community design for more environmentally sustainable cities. Though the urban science related to climate change and its implications for human settlement is in its early stages, the threat of climate change to urban settlements of today is so real that it is already becoming a concern of insurance and actuarial industries. These begin to assess risk to human settlement, construction and other risks associated with atmospheric conditions.
Currently numerous problems conditioned by global climate changes are quite clearly reflected in the contemporary urban and rural environment. A series of extreme weather conditions in the European cities and worldwide has shed the light on the vulnerability of the cities to the impact of climate changes. On the other part, the cities represent the major originators of the same but are also the main field of action to minimise their impacts. In light of that, the growing cities, particularly in respect to the growth of the density of dwelling, industry and traffic, represent the strategic place for mitigation of the harmful impacts of climate changes on the environment. Climate changes, to a great extent, affect the change of behaviour of the stakeholders in the city. These changes are also reflected through diverse changes in the urban structure: morphological, organisational, functional, economic, social and the changes in the quality of the environment. Global climate changes have also the unavoidable impact on the structure and functioning of the region, altering the region’s topography and relationships among its basic building elements.
In the backdrop of these menacing climate changes, our urban planners must help our cities become resilient which can absorb the twin impacts of rural to urban migration and worsening climate. Time has come when urban planning and climate change are going to intersect and urban planners, who handle a variety of responsibilities around community development and design and manage everything from transportation planning to park placement and land-use zoning, must be prepared to handle this conflict. What is clear is that the climate change-related extreme weather events may not stop but the urban planner’s efforts in making the Indian cities resilient and sustainable will help them bounce back after natural disasters.
The new cityscape planning must now do away with priority for concrete and instead replace the same with green pockets, which must be a part of the public places. The harsh energy guzzling glass facades of the commercial buildings must be made to sport only solar panels so that their energy needs are half met by their own generation. To this end, the government must ensure that the electricity load allocated or allowed to these buildings be a mix of conventional non-renewable energy and solar energy. This way the architects will be left with no other option but to ensure that the green building generates its own quota of solar energy.
(The writer is an environmental journalist)
