4.1.1 Chandigarh:
Chandigarh has more than 35% of its geographical area under forests, parks and trees covers making it one of the greenest cities of the country. It is one of the modern planned cities of India. Chandigarh has a geographical area of about 140 sq,km, has a population of about 10,54,686 according to 2011 census and density around 7912 persons/ sq.km. The per capita availability of green space is around 55 sq.m and the number of green spaces in terms of green belt/parks/gardens is around 1400, maintained by the Municipal Cor-poration of the city. One of the main features of the city is the Leisure Val-ley, running from the north eastern tip to the south-western end through city it is a 8 Km long linear-park, …show more content…
The city houses 360 parks /gardens spread across the city of various sizes. Important parks in Bangalore are Lalbagh - area - 97 acres, 1854 species, 673 gene and 890 cultivars of plants: Cubbon Park - 68 genera, 96 species, total of 6000 plants/trees; Bannerghatta National Park - houses important flora and fauna; Dhanvantarivana - spread over 37 acres is a garden of medical plants and consists of 414 species; Parks main-tained by Department of Horticulture - 365 (well developed - 55, partially maintained - 130, undeveloped - 180). Besides these parks, there are 200 other open spaces and green areas which are earmarked for development of community infrastructure such as parks and gardens. The green cover con-stitutes around 20% of the geographical area and results in per capita green space availability of 17sq.m (UDPFI suggest – 14sqm/capita). Although, den-sity of trees in Bangalore is lower than many other Asian cities, the species diversity is high. The vegetation cover is drastically decreasing leading fur-ther decrease of per capita availability of green space as the population grows day by day. In case of blue infrastructure, around 25 lakes have been developed by the local authority. Bangalore has witnessed to the decline in number of lakes and inadequate maintenance of parks. The city has …show more content…
With India’s economy boosting at rapid pace, there began a race to cope up with infrastructural needs, but this race failed to capitalize on sustainability. With the negative effects cropping up as a result of massive urbanization led to awareness amongst the citizens as well as authorities and companies who became con-scious about the importance of Green Infrastructure.
Many initiatives have been taken by government at national and state level which comprehends green infrastructure.
5.2 NATIONAL LEVEL APPROACH:
5.2.1 National environment policy, 2006
The nexus Environmental degradation with poverty is one of the key envi-ronmental challenges India is facing in many dimensions. Degradation is in-trinsically connected with environmental resources such as land, water, air flora, and fauna.
Drivers of degradation:
Population growth, inappropriate technology and consumption choice, pov-erty and development activities such as intensive agriculture, polluting in-dustries, unplanned urbanisation leads to change in relations between peo-ple and ecosystem.
Lack of enforcement of rights of access and use of environmental resources, policies that disincentives environmental conservation, governance