Need of Urban Forestry for Ecological Development in Varanasi City

EasyChair Preprint 2489

Abstract

The role of urban forest in the improvement of urban habitats and quality of life is significant. Trees in urban system provide a variety of ecosystem services including biodiversity conservation, removal of atmospheric pollutants, oxygen generation, noise reduction, mitigation of urban heat island effect, microclimate regulation, stabilization of soil, groundwater recharge, prevention of soil erosion and carbon sequestration. The important roles played by green spaces are social, economic, cultural and environmental aspects of sustainable development. Urban green spaces can be a comprehensive tool for long term protection of environmental sustainability through improving the quality of life and air quality, increasing property value due to their amenity and aesthetic characteristics, and reducing the energy costs of cooling buildings.Varanasi city is the centre of Indian tradition, religion, cultural practices and rituals, rich in heritage and colours of India, a city having a sense of its own, breathing and living in daily homage paid to the god and goddesses. The city as old as the culture of the country itself, built centuries ago is now wanting more space to breath and grow to come out of the old maze like narrow streets which has become its identity, with crumbling buildings which still hold the mark of its beauty, buried under dust of lack of maintenance. At present the city has less than 5 % urban forestry which actually should be 20% in urban areas. The question is that in spite of its significant as one of the important cities in the north why have the initiative not been taken by the State or central government. The paper highlights on the present condition of green covers in the city, various plantation work done by the forest division to create green belts and to make the city ecologically balanced and awareness of people about urban greening on the basis of pilot survey, which was conducted within the city.

Keyphrases: People Participation, air pollution, eco-tourism, ecological monitoring, environmental education, urban forestry

@booklet{EasyChair:2489,
  author    = {Kaushalendra Prakash Goswami and Varun Kumar},
  title     = {Need of Urban Forestry for Ecological Development in Varanasi City},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 2489},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2020}}