'By cutting down trees, we are flirting with disaster'

The Supreme Court today ordered status quo in the Aarey tree felling case, ordering the Maharashtra government not to cut down any more trees till the next hearing on October 21. ETV Bharat spoke to Ecologist Atul Deulgaonkar on this issue and elicited his opinion.

Mumbai: In a major relief for green activists, a special bench of the Supreme Court on Monday asked the Maharashtra government to ensure that no trees are further axed at Mumbai's Aarey Colony.

A bench of Justices Arun Mishra and Ashok Bhushan directed the government to maintain the status quo and said it would further hear all the petitions in the matter on October 21.

Talking exclusively to ETV Bharat, ecologist Atul Deulgaonkar said that the developmental projects and environment must go together, hand in hand, and we must ensure that they are not in conflict with each other.

"It is very important to have an environmental impact assessment done for any developmental project. After that, we must prove that we are not against nature. Developmental and environment must go together, hand in hand. We have to prove that environment and development are not in conflict with each other as it proved in America, Europe and other developing countries," Atul Deulgaonkar said.

"In the list of the top 50 green cities, we don't have any Indian city. We must take into consideration the design of the developmental project. For this we have to take inputs from environmentalists and architects before commencing the project," he added, citing the example of tree felling in Aarey forest.

"There is wonderful biodiversity in the Aarey forest area which will be vanished. There are seven lakh trees in that area in which we have so many animals and birds of different species, this entire ecosystem is important not only the trees," he added.

"Why any other site was not chosen?" he questioned.

"Actually we had wonderfull chance to show that we go with nature and not against nature. But we lost that chance," he further asserted.

"There is dire need to consider the fact that if we are going against nature, it will give us a return gift. But the gift will be in the form of natural disasters. When you destroy the forests, rains directly make contact with the ground and soil erosion takes place. This soil goes to the river because of which we face a situation like floods," he said.

"We have to care about nature, we have to reduce our risk. That is why we have to go with nature and not against it," he further added.

"When we cut trees we lose oxygen. We get at least 20 kilograms of oxygen and it absorbs carbon dioxide. So by cutting down trees, we are losers from both sides," he said.