New Delhi, India’s capital, struggles with numerous environmental challenges, including extremely poor air quality during winter and heat waves in summer. But it also offers a hopeful example of urban ecological restoration: the city has created seven “biodiversity parks” on previously degraded land, reports contributor Nidhi Jamwal for Mongabay India.
The Aravalli Biodiversity Park (ABP), a 280-hectare (692-acre) park located near an upscale neighborhood, is now a thriving forest of native plants. It’s become a popular spot for walkers and an educational hub for school and university students. However, until the early 2000s, the area was heavily degraded by intensive sand mining. Invasive plants like Prosopis juliflora, a type of mesquite, took over the entire landscape, said M. Shah Hussain, the scientist who heads the ABP restoration team.
The Delhi Development Authority (DDA), along with the University of Delhi, began restoring the mined area in 2004. Today, three previously abandoned deep mining pits serve as conservatories for butterflies, ferns and orchids.
“Looking at the green cover and forest sprawl now, it is hard to imagine that this portion of the Aravalli was a degraded wasteland pockmarked with abandoned mining pits two decades ago. There were piles of debris [mining waste] everywhere,” Hussain told Mongabay India.
A second site, the Neela Hauz Biodiversity Park, is home to a lake that was once a dumping ground for untreated sewage; today, it’s been restored as wetland ecosystem. The 3.88-hectare (9.6-acre) biodiversity park has a “constructed wetland” that treats wastewater before it flows into the lake, said Dinesh Albertson, a field biologist with the park.
“Natural processes of aeration and plants/grasses are used to treat polluted water, without any use of machinery or electricity,” Albertson told Mongabay India.
The five other biodiversity parks in New Delhi are Yamuna, Tilpath Valley, Tughlaqabad, Northern Ridge (Kamala Nehru Ridge) and South Delhi (Kalindi).
All seven parks were restored by the DDA and the University of Delhi and together span 820 hectares (2,026 acres).
Given the city’s environmental challenges, including air pollution, heat waves and floods, these greening efforts need to be expanded upon, experts told Jamwal.
“Green urban commons should not be seen merely as beautification projects,” Akshay Kaul, a New Delhi-based landscape architect, told Mongabay India. “We need a paradigm shift in how we view open spaces, urban forests, and biodiversity parks. They must be seen through the lens of climate resilience.”
Hussain agreed that biodiversity parks “are essential for building climate-resilient cities.”
“For instance, Neela Hauz acts like a sponge, holding excess water and releasing it slowly,” he said. “When planning cities, we focus on basic infrastructure like roads, drains, and water supply. Similarly, biodiversity parks and urban forests should be seen as fundamental green infrastructure.”
This is a summary of “Creating urban biodiversity parks from degraded lands” by Nidhi Jamwal for Mongabay India.
Banner image: Entrance to Aravalli Biodiversity Park in New Delhi. Image by ccarlstead via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
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