Historians revealed the history of Ahmedabad’s declining green cover and the concerns surrounding it.
The arid landscape of Gujarat’s largest city was once blooming with gardens, which were one of the most sought after spaces in the city, with almost every ruler contributing to it, according to the paper.
The paper titled, “Shrinking Greens: Travellers’ Account of the Heritage Gardens of Ahmedabad 1400-2016” uses the accounts of various travellers visiting Gujarat, describing the greenery to support the theory of how green the city once used to be.
According to the Ahmedabad Municipal Council’s (AMC) tree census, trees cover only 4.6 percent of the city’s total area. Only a little more than 2,188 hectares of the city’s total 46,985 hectares were found to be covered in green.
Out of the total number of trees, only 3.18 percent of the trees were found to be more than 100 years old as determined by their girths of 200 cm or more. There were a total of 6.18 lakh trees in Ahmedabad during the census by AMC.
The newly planted trees cannot have enough space to grow large because of a concrete jungle surrounding them. So even the recent plantation drives will not be very helpful in restoring the proper green cover of giant trees, according to the research paper.
High temperatures in Ahmedabad, compared to deserts like Kutch and Surendranagar, are attributed to dwindling green cover and growing concrete jungles, according to the paper.