Warming cities can’t afford to sacrifice their urban parks

Deepa Padmanaban is an independent journalist based in Bengaluru, India writing on environment, climate change, science, health and wildlife conservation.

Some of my earliest memories of Bengaluru, where I spent my summer holidays, are of looking up in wonder at the towering canopy of trees in Cubbon Park. Even in the height of summer, Bengaluru could be cool enough to require a light jacket. Today, the iconic Cubbon Park, the pride of the city I now call home, is under threat. So is Lalbagh Botanical Garden, another of the city’s iconic green spaces, with roots stretching back more than 250 years.

On a Sunday morning in Bengaluru last month, thousands gathered at Lalbagh Botanical Garden carrying a simple message: “Walk in Lalbagh. Walk for Lalbagh”. They were protesting against a new Karnataka law that allows up to 5 per cent of protected parkland to be used for public infrastructure. The provision could make as much as 12 acres of Lalbagh and 15 acres of neighbouring Cubbon Park available for such projects.

This is not the first time Bengaluru’s citizens have defended these green spaces from infrastructure projects. Earlier campaigns opposed proposals to build a metro line through Lalbagh. Today, protesters are confronting both a tunnel road project and a legislative change that potentially makes protected parkland easier to use.

The tunnel road project will pass through ecologically sensitive spaces and entails the felling of about 900 mature trees. The threat is particularly worrying as Bengaluru’s vegetation cover has shrunk dramatically since the 1970s. The loss has been accompanied by a sharp rise in land surface temperatures.

The protests in Bengaluru are striking because they are not just about two well-known parks or the city’s green cover. They are part of a larger struggle unfolding in cities around the world as urban residents confront the same question: what happens when cities run out of space?

In Mumbai, the Save Aarey movement has become one of the city’s longest-running environmental movements. Nearly four years of weekly protests have been held to protect the 1,300-hectare (3,212 acres) Aarey Colony urban forest from development.