The Earth Day 2016 theme is ‘Trees for the Earth.’ Our planet is currently losing over 15 billion trees each year due to deforestation, land development and bad forest management.

Well, now one may ask why Indian cities jump into celebrating an American Spring Festival in the boiling Indian summer. The answer is Indian cities too are facing the adverse effects of climate change as spring is hardly visible, winter is shortened by months, while monsoon days are just ceremonial. Because the climate of our city is no more the same as it was two decades ago, it is perhaps applicable to most cities.

Bhubaneswar is not an exception from this phenomenon. Perhaps it is most easiest way to blame climate change for the intense heat wave and erratic monsoon here than accepting how badly the city has travelled over the decades with a poor urban planning and governance.

Bhubaneswar is boiling at an average temperature of over 40 degree Celsius these days although once upon a time it used to be the greenest planned capital city of India and had the most comfortable climate. The reasons for such mess-up are the loss of green forest, surrounded by dry rivers beds, squeezed canals and absence of natural drainage systems, to name but a few.

Bhubaneswar has lost over 2,000 trees in recent years. The result is it is struggling against rapidly rising urban temperature by setting new records. Chandaka forest and water bodies were once controlling weather of Bhubaneswar, but now, builders and real estate players are controlling Chandaka. It is reflected in the rising heat in the city.

Many of the water mass areas, often called natural sponges of city, are no more active. Soil is covered with concrete everywhere. It is a big question as rising temperature will also raise some significant public health issues, infrastructure issues and livelihood issues as extreme heat is potentially deadly to vulnerable populations and it can cause infrastructure headache ranging from power outages to water deficiency. The mistakes of past decades can be rectified with innovative urban planning practices as there are tricks cities can use to cool off and some recent research shows these tactics can not only save lives but also tone down the effects of climate changes.

By reducing dependency on conventional way of accessing energy, reenergizing the lost water sponges to absorb more water, switching over to solar panel on rooftop and commuting by greener transport such as using public transport system or even cars energized by non conventional fuels etc can help. As a study says conventional fuel used by vehicles and generators add heat by 20 to 25 per cent.

It is important that Bhubaneswar must add more green space to its existing one. Trees provide shade and help evaporating water through their leaves. The challenge isn’t simply to plant trees but to preserve the ones that are already in place. The Earth Day 2016 calls for plantation of 7.8 billion trees by 2020 across the globe. Similarly, Bhubaneswar needs plantation at a massive scale.

The problem of climate vagaries needs to be solved through ecological sensitive urban planning which requires more green space than concrete structure. In fact, Bhubaneswar was planned way back in 1948 based on climate science that often kept the city with more green spaces, open spaces and free flow of water bodies. But somehow in early 90s Bhubaneswar missed its opportunity to stand as greenest capital of India when most of its neighborhood began to trap inside concrete jungle baring a few central units which still enjoy more green space.

(Dr Rout is an urban management practitioner and co founder of Local Governance Network. He can be reached at piyush.rout@lgnet.in)