Mumbai stands to lose its cultural wealth with the ongoing deforestation drive in Aarey Forest

The impending damage to the city’s unique green cover is not only an ecological loss but a cultural one too

Mumbai-based environmentalist and photographer Sanjiv Valsan currently works in one of the city’s most ecologically diverse regions—the Aarey forest. Valsan and his team at Aareyforest.in make efforts to educate people about imminent ecological threats looming over Mumbai and the significant role that the forest cover plays in keeping them at bay. “We know Aarey as ‘the green lung’ of Mumbai, but it would be more apt to call it a green sponge,” says Valsan. “A major part of the Mithi river that flows through the city drains in the forest and becomes groundwater. We have already diverted the river's natural course by cementing its banks hundreds of times. Cementing its floodplains in the Aarey will only cause the water to flood the city’s low-lying areas every monsoon, causing more havoc than it already does.” 

Bhaumik Gowande, a former urban planner with the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) further explains the city’s fragile topology by saying “Mumbai was once a group of seven islands and a lot of marshy, swampy land. The city we see now is a result of extensive reclamation and construction where concrete roads were built on top of these swampy forests. Calling it ecologically hazardous would be an understatement.” 

The recent appointment of the Eknath Shinde-led government in Maharashtra and their subsequent plans to restart the construction of a metro car shed in Aarey is  considered as the final coffin in the fragile ecological coffin described by both Valsan and Gowande. Valsan believes the decision would do much more harm to the city than good, robbing it of its cultural and ecological heritage. “ Aarey is home to so many tribes that have been the region’s inhabitants for centuries. We keep seeing them as an obstruction in our plans for ‘progress’ when all they’re trying to do is protect their homes.”

An endangered population

The Aarey forest is divided into 27 tribal hamlets ( padas) that house over 10,000 adivasis. Most of them belong to the Warli, Mahadev Koli, Malhar Koli, Katkari and Agri tribes that predate the very city that now presides over them. Valsan explains their plight, saying, "The adivasis are a part of Aarey's ecosystem just like its trees and leopards. These people who are used to roaming in acres and acres of forest are being made to shift to tiny 'flats'. There's no effort being made to preserve their way of life."

He believes the effort to encroach upon the adivasis' land is much more systemic and rampant than most people know. "A lot of these tribes, especially the Agris, raise cattle as a means of livelihood. Their milk tabelas are now being encroached upon by illegal construction, which directly threatens their livelihood. All Aarey's tribes have is their land and their animals."

Valsan further explains how Aarey’s tribes and their ways of living can be a great cultural asset to Mumbai. “Mumbai has the highest density of leopards in any city in the world. The tribes in Aarey have been protecting and worshiping their leopards for centuries. Leopards are a common motif in Warli art, which in itself is a UNESCO-worthy intangible heritage,” he says. “France, Spain and Italy were all compelled to reintroduce wolves to their wild areas because the ecological balance was completely off. The Warlis never made us get to a point where we’d have to import leopards into our own forests.” 

Contrasting views

Looking at the issue from the perspective of urban planning,Gowande has a different stance. “There’s just no space left in the city and no one knows this better than Mumbaikars. There’s construction going on right up to Khalapur (in Raigad district) which leaves very less scope to build a whole metro car shed. Constructing it farther away from the city would simply be too much of a financial burden for the civic authorities. Using a mere two per cent of Aarey’s total area (approximately 30 hectares) would any day be a better option.”

As for the widely suggested alternative of building the shed in Kanjurmarg, Gowande deems it to be worse. According to him, the water from the hills in and around Powai flows through Kanjurmarg and towards the Thane creek, and any construction around that area will cause flooding in Bhandup, Mulund and Kanjurmarg.

Valsan, on the other hand, believes it is important to oppose the ongoing construction at Aarey. "When you take out the buffer in and around the Sanjay Gandhi National Park and the 812 acres declared as protected area by the former government led by Uddhav Thackeray, you're left with 407 acres of the forest called the 'chopping block'. Allocating 80 acres of this land to the metro car shed is akin to lodging a foot in the door for more hazardous construction. It is valuable land that several lobbies are interested in.” The prospect of a  car shed would then leave room for the construction of buildings and malls.

While  Gowande views the disputed car shed as the lesser of many evils being floated as of now, he also believes that the ultimate decision to make a construction of this scale and importance involves greater consideration from all stakeholders. "Nobody can deny the fact that the land belongs to the adivasis living there. I understand wanting to construct new metro lines because the city is in desperate need of more public services. Making space for them in the ecological minefield that is Mumbai is a task that warrants more value-based research. Our human-environment relationships definitely need to be discussed more in government offices."

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