World Environment Day 2021: Green environment is the way of future
By Tripat Girdhar, an Environment Expert and Urban Planner
Being more aware and conscientious is the core idea of a green lifestyle. To do so, an architect, urban planner, and landscape architect must collaborate as part of a team that is supported by a local government.
Every year on June 5th, we commemorate World Environment Day by planting trees. And we forget about our surroundings for the entire year. The COVID epidemic has threatened millions of lives and has had a negative influence on the international economy and nation. It has also had an impact on the environment, as people used less vehicles and industries, demonstrating how vital the environment is for human beings. The style of life of people all across the world has transformed now.
The Industrial Revolution is a watershed event in human evolution that is (mis)credited with various pivotal events, notably the introduction of fossil fuels, which has resulted in global warming. Growing labor demand prompted widespread migration to cities, resulting in the development of new architectural guiding principles for mass housing and the grid technique of town planning. The house was reduced to a “machine for life,” with architecture focusing on mass production of housing to feed factories with insatiable appetites for labor.
An Environment Expert and Urban Planner, Tripat Girdhar said in a statement, “COVID-19 will not be the last epidemic that humanity will experience. We have already experienced three pandemics in the twenty-first century, although there was only one major pandemic in the nineteenth century. As a result, epidemics are becoming more common, and we must recognize this. We have a decade to restore ecosystems, which is critical but we can do it collaboratively.”
Unsustainable urbanization, climate change, biodiversity loss, and deterioration of ecosystem services are all concerns that Indian cities face today, along with water scarcity, flooding, and pollution. Policymakers in India, on the other hand, have yet to seriously consider incorporating nature into urban infrastructure. On the other side, European governments are increasingly turning to natural-based solutions (NbS).
Various urban challenges are being addressed around the world utilizing methods that place environment at the forefront of their plans. For example, as part of the Green Corridor project, Medelln, Colombia’s second-largest city, used NbS to alter 18 roadways and 12 rivers. In the Indian context, such solutions will become more important, with aims to be incorporated into policymaking and city development agendas.
Our cities must be reimagined from the ground up. The goal is for many agencies to collaborate in order to build more resilient and environmentally friendly homes and cities. To approach environmental rating systems and performance scores as the baseline for the future, the architect, urban planner, and landscape architect must work as a team with the support of an urban governance authority that can make policy changes.
For a time, lockdowns helped the environment breathe cleaner air, but India produced 45,308 tons of biomedical rubbish between June 2020 and May 10, 2021, with an average daily output of 132 tons of Covid-19-related garbage, according to the Central Pollution Control Board.
Despite the enormous health and environmental crises, if everyone works together, the damage can be minimized.