Trees vs Roads

A proposal to cut down about 3,200 trees in order to create space for the construction of a ring road for Guwahati does not appear to be beneficial for the overall growth of the premier city of the Northeast. There is no denying the fact that a ring road, as proposed, will immensely benefit the fast movement of vehicles in a city that has been rapidly expanding in the past couple of years. Guwahati must grow, but it must grow in a scientific manner, with all facilities like the road network, drainage, hospitals, schools, open spaces, and greenery being looked at in a balanced way. Already, several thousand trees have been felled in the most indiscriminate manner in order to widen the Khanapara-Jalukbari NH by-pass and four-lane the Guwahati-Goalpara section of the National Highway in the past three or four years. A number of trees were also felled while constructing a flyover on RG Barua Road in the city in recent times. In sharp contrast, several states in the country have adopted measures to transplant trees in order to facilitate infrastructure development. The Odisha government, for instance, has recently approved a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for the translocation of large trees in the state. Because of this, the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) has been compelled to transplant about 3,200 trees that need to be removed in order to widen an 18-km stretch of the National Highway between Paradip and Chandikhol. In Karnataka, the state forest department has made it a point that NHAI make all arrangements for the transplantation of trees before road construction or widening work is taken up. In Delhi, about 4,000 trees were transplanted in the past four or five years under NHAI’s Urban Extension Road-II. Delhi has also adopted a policy of penalising the agency carrying out the transplantation if it fails to ensure an 80% survival rate of the transplanted trees. Surprisingly, in Assam, where the rate of deforestation has been faster than in many other states of the country, no such policy has been framed and adopted. Because of the absence of such a policy, the Assam forest department has also not been able to ask the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) to ensure that the latter’s Green Highways (Plantations, Transplantations, Beautification, and Maintenance) Policy 2015 is implemented in the state.