The green wall

Green strip across Aravalli will have numerous benefits

After years of deliberations, the government has finally launched the grandiose project to create a 5-km wide green strip across the Aravalli range of hills spanning Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana, and Delhi to combat desertification and land degradation. The Aravallis, counted among the oldest mountains of the world, are deemed, in several respects, as the lifeline of the National Capital Region (NCR), and a natural buffer between the Thar Desert and the north-western fertile plains. Named aptly the Aravalli Green Wall, this afforested tract would offer multifarious and, more importantly, enduring ecological rewards besides helping to meet the country’s commitments made under various global conventions related to restoring degraded lands, protecting biodiversity, and mitigating climate change. However, the success of the project in delivering the desired dividends would hinge largely on how effectively the government manages to rein in illegal mining, encroachments by the real-estate mafia, and other kinds of illegitimate exploitation of natural resources of these hills. Interestingly, the project was inaugurated by Environment, Forest and Climate Change Minister Bhupender Yadav by planting a sapling in village Tikli, near Gurugram, an area of Haryana known for violations of land-use laws.

The idea of forming the Aravalli Green Belt seems to have emanated from the African Great Green Wall, being put up jointly by 11 nations to contain desertification in the Sahel region and halt the expansion of the Sahara Desert, apart from promoting water harvesting and improving land-utilisation patterns across North Africa. Likewise, the Aravalli project, too, would help conserve rainwater and accelerate groundwater replenishment, especially in the NCR, where the water table is rapidly receding to inaccessible depths, resulting in land subsidence in some areas. Besides, it would restrict the dust blowing in from the Thar Desert, exacerbating air pollution in Delhi. The mooted green strip, which may not be entirely contiguous, would embrace some of the tracts that badly need vegetative cover and protection from exploitative anthropogenic activity.

About 2.3 million hectares of the 6.3 million-hectare area proposed to be brought under the green buffer in Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Delhi currently falls in the category of degraded land. According to the “Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas”, prepared by the Indian Space Research Organisation through satellite imagery, more than 50 per cent of the territories of these states suffers from land degradation of varying degrees. Improvement in the green canopy of these areas would contribute to meeting the targets of creating an additional 2.5 billion-tonne carbon sink through afforestation and restoring 26 million hectares of degraded land by 2030.

Significantly, the agro-forestry and pasture development component of the Aravalli Green Wall plan involves planting native trees, shrubs, and perennial grasses to ensure their better survivability and higher potential to support the livelihood of local communities. The project also envisages rejuvenating and restoring surface water bodies and catchments of rivers, notably the Banas, Sahibi, and Luni, which originate in the Aravallis and flow into the ecologically and strategically vital marshlands of the Rann of Kutch, along the country’s border with Pakistan. However, the government would need to make special efforts to seek the much-needed cooperation and active involvement of state governments, research bodies, civil society organisations, corporate houses and, most importantly, local communities to look after the plantations and ensure sustainable gains from this ambitious project.