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Developing tools for urban planning and environment management: A unique effort of an environmental NGO in Hyderabad

Automobile Pollution
Automobile density has increased tremendously in the past five years along with the unplanned growth of the city. In addition to public transport and surpassing its growth rate, every other type of personalized vehicle number rose sharply. Linear growth along the main roads is one of the major factors for this exponential increase in automobiles. Estimates show that there are nearly 6 lakhs of different categories of vehicles out of which nearly four lakhs are two wheelers and one-lakh cars. On an average daily 11-lakh liters of petrol is consumed. It is beyond one's imagination as to how much amount of carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, ozone (indirectly); lead and monocarbons are released into the atmosphere due to this consumption. Of these emissions, carbon monoxide is the most hazardous. Most of the respiratory and heart diseases can safely be attributed to this foul urban air. The most vulnerable sections are: children, the elderly. Asthmatic, policemen, roadside vendors, mechanics, etc.

Responses
Most of the administrative actions are disjointed and fragmented. There is a wide public gap in the management, planning or foresight. Governmental actions are based on outright political considerations or deficit data. The concept of town planning has been long back forgotten.

Successive industrial policies favored a `clustered' approach to industrialization, further strengthening these factors. Countrywide, cities like Calcutta, Bombay, Delhi, Madras and Bangalore, in that order, took the brunt of this demographic shift until the mid-80s. But overall this growth rate has been slowing down due to varied factors such as deteriorating infrastructure, environmental degradation, inner city decay, costly living conditions and neighborhood collapse.

In contrast to this trend, Hyderabad has become the new boom city in the past decade. Founded by Mohammed Quli Qutub Shah on the southern banks of the Musi River, Hyderabad was a model habitat in its heyday. All its seven rulers, before Independence, were learned men and great builders. The city was noted for its mosques and minarets, bazaars and bridges, hills, lakes and baghs and roads. But, presently, Hyderabad lost its old world charm and beauty.

Urban Environmental Planning
It can be easily understood that urban problems cannot be approached in isolation. Urban chaos, basically, arises out of lack of planning, piece-meal approach, confusion of objectives, etc. It is high time to diagnose the present status, which might help in charting a better future course. Development of tools, which would enable an accurate diagnosis of the problems, constitutes an important step in planning.

With haphazard, and faster spread of the urban sprawl, situations are becoming increasingly complex. Policy-making structures have been hamstrung by lack of regular, reliable, proper and authentic information. The present issues of urban and environmental management demand more and detailed information. Most of these relate to the location and geological distribution of industries, houses, offices, infrastructure, etc., basically in relation with the natural resources. The simplest and most basic tool is creating a spatial map, to enable a broader understanding of the ground realities, more than anything else.

Realising this, Centre for Resource Education initiated a project on spatial mapping of industrial estates. The objective is to 'cluster' the industries into groups based on the type of process and end products. Further, the exercise includes mapping of the effluent water streams, sewage streams and their various joining points to the natural streams. This map will be layered, which deal with various parameters like contribution to pollution, environmental impact, monitoring points, and establishing pollution loads.

A series of spatial maps, of industrial estates and other 'grey' zones would enable the process of determining the major pollutants, their 'load' on specific environments and lead to the establishment of the cause and effect analysis for mitigating pollution. This approach can further be qualified by employing tools like GIS. However, the linkage of real time physical data to GIS and precautions for incorporating correct data would come much later. These tools could become the basis for economy-based policy prescriptions, in line with the polluter's pays principle. It would help in achieving equity and justice in the determination of pollution caused by individual industry. This is important considering the 'leaning' of regulatory authorities on tiny, small and medium industries to achieve their targets.

With the cooperation of Jeedimetla Industries Association, Jeedimetla Effluent treatment Ltd., and the AP Pollution control Board, Centre for Resource Education has developed a spatial map of Jeedimetla industrial estate. This map was developed to fix monitoring points for identifying the extent of pollution by analyzing specific parameters related to chemicals used and products made by industries located in the proximity of the monitoring points, and to prepare an action plan for clean up. A unique cooperative effort between industries, regulatory bodies and NGOs in India, this is further being continued to study individual industrial processes (waste audit et al).

Presently, Centre for Resource Education on its own is developing spatial maps for other industrial estates. These maps once developed would be useful tools for long term monitoring of environmental pollution and ecological degradation, as well as help in developing credible information sources for possible policy interventions.

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