All is not well here: Let’s take pledge to adopt green & clean lifestyle

The city and its residents urgently need green breathing spaces. As this year’s theme for World Environment Day is ‘Reimagine. Recreate. Restore’, we need to remind ourselves that nature holds the key to our existence and not vice versa. The city’s nature-friendly report card has always been below par, says Tribune correspondent Neha Walia

Ganda Nullah has extreme level of water pollutants

It’s 2021 and we are in the middle of a pandemic, which refuses to let go, and stuck us with a realisation that we need to adopt a green and clean lifestyle. A city that has an average population of 14 lakh, generates over 600 metric tonnes of garbage everyday and used to host more than one million tourists in a month before the pandmeic began, the systematic failure to protect its ecology not just threatens the quality of life of residents, but also flora and fauna in the region.

Response towards environment conservation and regulation has been staggered and always too little, too late. Earlier, Amritsar’s ranking in the Ease of Living Index assessment, a citizen perception survey released by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, placed it at 45th spot among 49 cities assessed in the category. The city’s rankings in several surveys conducted under Swachh Bharat and Smart City projects has consistently been poor, placing it among the low ranking cities, in the last five years.

The recent report on air quality assessment conducted under the CITIIS programme by the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Development and funded by the French Development Agency and European Union, recorded the average amount of PM 10 and 2.5 particles in the air at several areas to be much higher than normal. Other air pollutants, including sulphur-dioxide, nitrogen-dioxide, carbon-monoxide, ozone as well as noise pollution levels were monitored and found to be just around the minimum mark.

Environmentalists have rued about depleting green spaces, including Ram Bagh. Gole Bagh and Chali Khuh are the only remaining reservoirs of the city’s green wealth. A few years ago, a large number of trees were cut for the BRTS corridor. Since then, only a portion of the green cover lost has been revived. Recently, around 80 trees on the the banks of Upper Bari Doab Canal (UBDC) that were supposed to be chopped for a project were saved after residents and activists raised concerns.

The city has struggled with the implementation of a systematic waste management programme. Bhagtanwala garbage dump has turned into the Achilles heel for civic body.