View allAll Photos Tagged ECOSYSTEMS
Jethro Tull - Living In The Past (Supersonic, 27.03.1976)
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JETHRO TULL - THIS WAS
Aambyvalley rd., Upper Lonavala Maharashtra India
Endemic to Western ghats
This species is legally protected in India under Schedule II of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972
Ecosystem services - I recently contributed illustration for the DEFRA Natural Environment White Paper, which is launched today. DEFRA - The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is a government department in the UK. You can download the Natural Environment White Paper here
www.defra.gov.uk/environment/natural/whitepaper/
The Natural Environment White Paper is a bold and ambitious statement outlining the Government’s vision for the natural environment over the next 50 years, backed up with practical action to deliver that ambition.
Nature is sometimes taken for granted and undervalued. But people cannot flourish without the benefits and services our natural environment provides. A healthy, properly functioning natural environment is the foundation of sustained economic growth, prospering communities and personal wellbeing.
© Rod Hunt 2011
View Rod Hunt full portfolio here
On September 01, 2007, the most ambitious program yet to resettle Mumbai's ‘Dharavi’ slum entered an active phase, promising to free the city of the biggest embarrassment in its quest to become a global business destination. An Indian government agency began evaluating "prequalification" bids submitted by developers across the world to build housing and social infrastructure to resettle the slum's residents. About 57,000 families with about 340,000 people and hundreds of small businesses currently occupy the 535-acre stretch in mostly illegal structures that have multiplied over decades.
The new "ecosystem" that will replace the slum was conceived by Mr. Mukesh Mehta, a U.S.-trained architect whose firm is the project's manager. Mr. Mehta has become India's pre-eminent slum-rehab guru: He has taken on a handful of similar projects in other cities including Hyderabad and Ahmadabad, and he wants to replicate his model of replacing slums with sustainable ecosystems across the country and in other emerging economies. Mr. Mehta's firm, M. M. Project Consultants, where he is chairman, is also overseeing a project to resettle and rehabilitate between 60,000 and 80,000 families in a slum stretch near Mumbai's international airport, in order to make room for a project already underway to upgrade and expand infrastructure there. India Knowledge@Wharton spoke to Mr. Mehta and Mr. Sanjay Reddy, Chief Executive Officer of Mumbai International Airport (Pvt) Ltd., about the impact these projects will have and any potential challenges that lie ahead.
For the ‘Dharavi’ rehabilitation, 26 consortia comprising 78 companies have filed preliminary bids. The project's total cost is estimated at Rs. 9,250 crore ($2.3 billion), covering housing, civic infrastructure and amenities. It will be distributed across five contracts valued at between Rs. 1,000 crore ($250 million) and Rs. 2,500 crore ($625 million) each. Winning bidders will pay a "premium" to the government in exchange for the development rights. Mr. Mehta says the state government could collect premiums totalling as much as Rs. 4,000 crore ($1 billion), which will come out of the developers' profits.
Mr. Mehta says bidders that meet prequalification criteria will be short-listed by the end of September, and then asked to submit detailed proposals. By early December, he expects to announce the successful bidders, and ground should be broken by January of next year.
Public-Private Partnerships
Mr. Mehta's model is designed to cross-subsidize free housing and infrastructure with for-sale housing and commercial space. Under the plan, developers will provide free housing of 225 sq. ft. to each of 57,000 families. These would be one-room studio apartments with an attached bath and kitchen, plus related utilities and amenities including schools, colleges, hospitals and parks. The developers will offset their costs with for-sale housing and commercial space at market rates. Some of that will come from the market prices residents and commercial establishments like shops will be required to pay for space greater than 225-sq.-ft. A portion of the developers' revenues from these for-sale properties will accrue to the government as a premium.
"All the world's eyes are on Dharavi," says Mr. Mehta about the bidding interest the project has generated so far. The bidders include many of India's major industrial groups such as Reliance; engineering and construction firm Larsen & Toubro; and real estate developers DLF, Hiranandani Constructions, the K. Raheja Group, Tata Housing and Mahindra Gesco. Several foreign companies have also shown interest in bidding, including real estate developer Hines of Houston, Tex.; Ascendas and Capitaland of Singapore; and Emaar Properties of Dubai.
Mr. Mehta acknowledges that the project's schedule could be thrown off course by legal squabbles, bureaucratic delays, disputes between and with slum dwellers, and any opposition from local politicians, underworld slumlords and other interested parties. He says that the project's very economic and social logic will hopefully overwhelm critics, and he routinely addresses local meetings to garner support. He adds that the courts should play a supportive role, because they "have understood the slum rehabilitation scheme and are aware that this has been going on for 10 years."
A City within a City
Mumbai's slums hold 55% of the city's 12 million residents, or 1.2 million families in 1,126 slum pockets, as a survey by Mr. Mehta's firm revealed. ‘Dharavi’ is the most high profile for a variety of reasons, including its prime location straddling the city's eastern and western corridors, flourishing small and medium businesses, a reputation for spawning crime, and chronic unsanitary conditions on which the city's municipality appears to have given up.
"This is now my life's work," says Mr. Mehta, 56, who was born into a wealthy family that ran steel mills and other businesses in India's Gujarat state. ‘Dharavi’ was far from his mind when he graduated with a degree in architecture in India and then left the country to obtain his master's degree at the Pratt Institute in New York City in 1984. While in the U.S., he developed expensive, custom homes in Long Island's affluent Nassau County. Until 1997, he shuttled between the U.S. and India while running a few businesses, but eventually closed them all down to focus on his ‘Dharavi’ project.
Mr. Mehta literally stumbled upon ‘Dharavi’ when he returned from the U.S. He says he was galvanized by the combination of filth, squalor, poverty, enterprise and the locked potential of the slum's prime location, and began to work on a rehabilitation plan. He set up his offices in ‘Dharavi’ "to understand who I am dealing with, and interact at the grassroots level with the slum dwellers."
Perversely, ‘Dharavi’ is also emblematic of the survival instincts of Mumbai's continually expanding population in the face of infrastructure unable to keep pace. About 300 new immigrant families are said to enter the city as permanent residents every day. Meanwhile, the slum residents have started hundreds of small businesses in pottery, leather craft, plastics and metal recycling, cottage-industry electronics and garments. "Show me a single beggar in Dharavi," says Mr. Mehta, underscoring his point that the suburb has the potential to transform itself from an eyesore into an economic engine for the city.
Government Planning Shortcomings
Over the years, successive governments have attempted to rehabilitate Dharavi's slum dwellers, and it became one of the first targets of non-government organizations looking for suitable projects. Mr. Mehta felt many of these went about the task in a piecemeal fashion. He drafted an alternative plan that he pitched to the state government in 1997.
Mr. Mehta says the government's plan at that time was "brilliant," in that it sought to use public-private partnerships to extract value from the land on which the slum dwellers resided, by allowing for-sale development options. But it suffered from some fundamental shortcomings, he notes. Most important of all was the failure to recognize the organic and haphazard ways in which slums proliferate into every available area: Lacking contiguous settlements or rectangular plots, they don't allow for conventional master planning.
Dharavi's redevelopment occurred only in those pockets where developers were able to secure the required consent from residents in any slum (70%). But because these pockets were typically mapped out in irregular plots and in what continued to be a slum neighbourhood, the for-sale housing went for low prices. The government, for the most part, kept a hands-off approach after laying down project specifications.
The poorly staffed government machinery was unable to enforce the project specifications on construction quality, and rampant corruption made things worse, says Mr. Mehta. The roughly 100,000 homes that have been built in this manner so far "will become vertical slums," he says. Moreover, he adds, development under the government's plan is not sustainable. "Unless I improve the ability of the slum dwellers to generate income and live the modified lifestyle, they cannot maintain their new housing."
Mr. Mehta proposed a master plan for the entire slum – an integrated, sustainable development approach called HIKES (health, income, knowledge, environment and socio-cultural development). Mr. Mehta says the HIKES approach allows slum dwellers "to maximize their opportunities and be respected for who they are" in terms of their own achievements. The government gave the plan enthusiastic support.
"With HIKES, the chance of [slum residents] leading a sustainable, improved life is greater than you would get by providing just housing," says Mr. Mehta. "This is the mistake that all the developing countries are making – China, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Turkey and Malaysia. They are thinking of slum rehabilitation as a housing issue. Housing is only one part of it; the larger part is human resources."
Leveraging Location
‘Dharavi’ has several advantages in terms of its location. It is the only Mumbai suburb with connections to all three of the city's commuter rail corridors (Western, Central and Harbour lines). It is also less than two miles from the airport, and a third of a mile from the new Bandra-Kurla commercial complex.
The integrated development approach and the prospect of a slum-free suburb emerging in ‘Dharavi’ made it easier to market the project to businesses, academic establishments and professional associations. Mr. Mehta lists a string of collaborations that have been struck so far:
A collaboration with the All India Association of Day Surgeons ensures that in exchange for space to house day surgery polyclinics, its member doctors would provide free or subsidized services to slum residents.
Alliances with primary and secondary schools to set up facilities in ‘Dharavi.’ For every free school an educational institution puts up, it will get space for a full fee-paying school, provided the quality of education is the same at both schools.
An agreement with the National Institute of Design (NID) in Ahmadabad to allow for Dharavi's leather crafts and pottery industries to turn out designer brands. "So far they are only imitating the Guccis and the Pierre Cardins and the Christian Diors of the world," says Mr. Mehta. "NID has agreed to upgrade the skills of the leather craftsmen and make ceramists of the potters." A few brand-name retail chains like Metro Shoes and Hi-Design have agreed to market the leather crafts produced through such ventures. Mr. Mehta sees similar possibilities in a range of other industries, from garments to toys and food products.
A provisional agreement with the Gems & Jewellery Export Promotion Council for its members to set up 300 factories and hire 250 people for each, creating a total of 75,000 jobs with an average annual income of Rs. 100,000 ($2,500). Mr. Mehta says this would be a big income generator even if only a third of those employees are hired from ’Dharavi.’ He says this initiative is estimated to generate exports worth $1.5 billion annually.
A project to create a golf driving range in the middle of ‘Dharavi’ has gotten traction among some big businesses such as the Reliance Group, says Mr. Mehta, who argues it would prevent encroachment of vacant land and draw the wealthy into ‘Dharavi.’ Another of Mr. Mehta's ideas is to set up a cricket museum in the suburb. He sees both possibilities as efforts to help integrate the slum population with mainstream middle- and upper-income groups.
Mr. Mehta claims the revised regulations for sewerage, storm water drainage and other utilities are in line with international standards. "We have looked at eco-housing criteria. We're talking about alternative sources of energy, solid waste recycling and management, recycling water, rain water harvesting, energy conservation and even issues related to global warming, at the infrastructure level," he says.
Further, Mr. Mehta's firm has also rewritten much of the earlier regulations that he felt held site planning and construction norms to low compliance requirements. The mandatory space required between two buildings has been doubled from the earlier level to 20 ft.; similarly, open space requirements, as a proportion of construction area, was increased from 8% to 15% of the developed area.
Under the earlier regime, homes could not get "even light and air ventilation properly," Mr. Mehta says. Some developers "cheated on the 8% open space norm by providing 1% here, 3% somewhere else and 4% in a third place, with the result that you don't even get one maidan [Hindi for "playground"]," he adds. Slum dwellers needed more open space than others, he argues, "because their per-capita housing space is less and the density is higher."
Will people used to the ways of a slum adopt a new outlook about upkeep and keep their surroundings clean? Mr. Mehta isn't taking chances: Deals are in place for all providers of utilities and services, including plumbing, elevators and exterior paint to maintain and undertake repairs free of charge for the first 15 years. Developers, too, will be required to maintain the buildings they erect for 15 years.
Mr. Mehta doesn't see slum proliferation through encroachment as a recurring problem in the areas that will be developed. The residents, as owners of their new dwellings, will prevent that, he says. "If it is your fiefdom or your area you will not let anybody come in." The resettled families will have an initial 30-year lease, with automatic renewal for another 30 years. For each home they build, developers will put Rs. 20,000 ($400) in an escrow account to finance its upkeep; the homeowner will meet costs beyond that. All that comes with a caveat: residents cannot sell their homes for the first 10 years.
Mr. Mehta says his firm's responsibility for managing the project runs "until the last slum dweller is re-housed." That may take about seven years from now, he says. His firm currently has 68 employees; he expects that to grow to more than 350 by the time construction starts in December.
A Different Set of Challenges
The public-private partnership model is also a key driver at the other big slum resettlement project on Mr. Mehta's plate, near the city's international airport. At an estimated cost of Rs.7,200 crore ($1.75 billion), the expansion and upgrade of Mumbai's international airport is among the largest private-sector infrastructure projects underway in the country. Plans are to double both annual passenger capacity to 40 million annually and cargo capacity to 1 million tons.
But to make way for that expansion, the project's promoter – Mumbai International Airport (Pvt) Ltd. (MIAL) – has to clear 276 acres in the airport's vicinity. That stretch includes a slum that houses between 60,000 and 80,000 families. The plans are to resettle them into new housing at another location within a six-mile radius. "They have their social and financial sustenance in this locality, so there would be huge resistance if we try to move them too far out," says Mr. Sanjay Reddy, Chief Executive Officer of MIAL, whose family-run GVK Group is a 74% joint venture partner with the public sector Airports Authority of India (26%).
Mr. Reddy's firm has already identified the lots where it plans to build the new housing, and is in the process of selecting a developer. "We took over the airport's operations about a year ago and are doing many things in parallel," he says. "The first is to continue running the existing facility. Second, we are simultaneously working on improving the operations. The third leg of the project is to redevelop the slum land in the airport area."
But Mr. Mehta notes that having to move people out of the area will likely make for a more challenging project. "Slums are really a vote bank for the political parties," he says. "Even if you can convince the slum dwellers to move and give them a better lifestyle, the political parties obstruct it because they lose their votes. Local politicians don't want to see a vote base they have cultivated for many years suddenly vanish."
Mr. Reddy says MIAL has so far been successful in persuading politicians to cooperate. "We have gotten a lot of support form political, bureaucratic and government officials," he says. "We cannot do anything without them." However, he adds that securing records related to the land and its dwellers has been "a messy affair."
The airport slum resettlement project shares many of the features of the ‘Dharavi’ model. Mr. Mehta says the effort here is also to have an integrated, sustainable development approach with public-private partnerships. "Here, too, we would work for a similar kind of township approach, and maybe even generate opportunities for income generation with skill development and capacity building," he says.
(Courtesy Knowledge@Wharton Network managed by the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania – U.S.A.)
Related web links :
‘Dharavi’ – largest slum in Asia
‘Dharavi’ – Life in a slum
news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/world/06/dharavi_slum/html...
As Mumbai booms, the poor of its notorious ‘Dharavi’ slum find themselves living in some of India's hottest real estate
www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0705/feature3/
Mumbai slum dwellers fight development plan
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6970800.stm
State makes more squatters eligible for ‘Dharavi’ rehabilitation
economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/PoliticsNation/State_ma...
Reference :
Mike Davis on a planet of slums
www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php?article_id=9073
The growth of the global slums
www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php?article_id=9074
Urban population to overtake country dwellers for first time
www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1798774,00.html
PHOTO : ‘Dharavi’ slum, Mumbai. Photo with courtesy of National Geographic Magazine Interactive Edition published by the National Geographic Society, U.S.A.
Source of Photo :
www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0705/feature3/
Source of Main article :
knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/india/article.cfm?articleid=4223
In the case of forest cover change, the studies refer to the period 1980–2000 and are based on national statistics, remote sensing, and to a limited degree expert opinion. In the case of land cover change resulting from degradation in drylands (desertification), the period is unspecified but inferred to be within the last half-century, and the major study was entirely based on expert opinion, with associated low certainty.
For any form of publication, please include the link to this page:
This photo has been graciously provided to be used in the GRID-Arendal resources library by: Philippe Rekacewicz, Emmanuelle Bournay, UNEP/GRID-Arendal
The biosphere we live in is tired of us. It is on the verge of tolerance and has already started to show its ominous reactions to our self-destructive actions. So, we humans are looking for backups, may be some other places in the universe if this blue planet decides not to sustain us anymore. We look for habitable exoplanets or atleast think about the inhabitable Luna or Mars to terraform into suitable future refuge for the human race.
To carry out research on the human sustenance in closed, self replenishing ecosystems, a research facility was established in Tuscon, Arizona in between 1987 and 1991. Since this facility sits on the Earth, the first biosphere, it was innovatively named Biosphere 2. Biosphere 2 has replicated five key biomes of the world inside it, with more or less success. It harbors a large, green house enclosed tropical rainforest, a small sea, desert, mangrove forest and a savannah grassland. It also has a human habitat and three artificial mountain slopes. Although several initial research attempts on human sustainibility in a closed system like Biosphere 2 has been deemed unsuccessful and were mared with criticism, they point out critical gaps in our knowledge about 'living on our own' in a new planet or biosphere. Simply put, we are not ready yet to leave the Earth in search of a new habitat if a catastrophe happens in recent years.
I was in Biosphere 2 from January 7 to January 12 to attend the "Environmental Virology Workshop 2013" organized by the University of Arizona and the Gordon Betty Moore Foundation. The workshop was pretty intensive, with only a two hour gap during the lunch time and half an hour breaks in between every session. So, I decided to carry only the Fujifilm X100 with a 35mm fixed lens.
Sitting right inside the desert, Biosphere 2 is a unique idea realized through breathtaking architechture and ecological niches. My photos probably tell just a little part of the story, you have to be there for a few days to experience the totality of it.
The San Pedro riparian area, containing about 40 miles of the upper San Pedro River, was designated by Congress as a National Conservation Area on November 18, 1988. The primary purpose for the designation is to protect and enhance the desert riparian ecosystem, a rare remnant of what was once an extensive network of similar riparian systems throughout the Southwest.
Many recreational opportunities are available within the NCA. Murray Springs Clovis Site, a significant archaeological site contains an undisturbed stratigraphic record of the past 40,000 years. Excavations were conducted by the University of Arizona from 1966 to 1971. People first arrived in this area 11,000 years ago. They belonged to what we now call the Clovis Culture and were the earliest known people to have inhabited North America. Named after the distinctive and beautifully crafted Clovis spear points they made, they were expert hunters of the large mammals of the last Ice Age. An interpretive trail leads visitors through the site. From Sierra Vista, take State Highway 90 east 6 miles to Monson Road. Turn left, and go about 1.2 miles to the signed turnoff to Murray Springs. The access road is located on the right.
The Spanish Presidio Santa Cruz de Terrenate is the most intact remaining example of a once-extensive network of similar presidios. These fortresses marked the northern extension of New Spain into the New World. Only a stone foundation and a few remaining adobe wall remnants mark the location of an isolated and dangerous military station. From Fairbank on Highway 82, drive approximately 2 miles west on Highway 82, turn right on the Kellar Ranch Road and travel approximately 3 miles to the trailhead. Hike about 2 miles to the ruins and interpretive displays.
The San Pedro House, located 9 miles east of Sierra Vista on State Highway 90, is a popular trailhead for birdwatchers, hikers, and mountain bikers. The Friends of San Pedro operate a bookstore and information center.
Photo by Bob Wick, BLM.
The outdoor section of the queue for Flight of Passage provides some great views of the floating mountains.
In the case of forest cover change, the studies refer to the period 1980–2000 and are based on national statistics, remote sensing, and, to a limited degree, expert opinion. In the case of land cover change resulting from degradation in drylands (desertification), the period is unspecified but inferred to be within the last half-century, and the major study was entirely based on expert opinion, with associated low certainty. Change in cultivated area is not shown.
For any form of publication, please include the link to this page:
This photo has been graciously provided to be used in the GRID-Arendal resources library by: Philippe Rekacewicz, Emmanuelle Bournay, UNEP/GRID-Arendal
Peter Maynard, Life in Shadows, Canon Powershot G11, Processed with Nik Plugins, Melbourne, South Bank.
Healthy natural coastal ecosystems, such as mangrove forests, saltwater marshlands and seagrass meadows provide a vast array of important co-benefits to coastal communities around the world, including throughout the Arabian Peninsula. These benefits include ecosystem services such as a rich cultural heritage; the protection of shorelines from storms; erosion or sea-level rise; food from fisheries; maintenance of water quality; and landscape beauty for recreation and ecotourism. In a “Blue Carbon” context these ecosystems also store and sequester potentially vast amounts of carbon in sediments and biomass.
For any form of publication, please include the link to this page: www.grida.no/resources/3853
This photo has been graciously provided to be used in the GRID-Arendal resources library by: Peter Prokosch
The San Pedro riparian area, containing about 40 miles of the upper San Pedro River, was designated by Congress as a National Conservation Area on November 18, 1988. The primary purpose for the designation is to protect and enhance the desert riparian ecosystem, a rare remnant of what was once an extensive network of similar riparian systems throughout the Southwest.
Many recreational opportunities are available within the NCA. Murray Springs Clovis Site, a significant archaeological site contains an undisturbed stratigraphic record of the past 40,000 years. Excavations were conducted by the University of Arizona from 1966 to 1971. People first arrived in this area 11,000 years ago. They belonged to what we now call the Clovis Culture and were the earliest known people to have inhabited North America. Named after the distinctive and beautifully crafted Clovis spear points they made, they were expert hunters of the large mammals of the last Ice Age. An interpretive trail leads visitors through the site. From Sierra Vista, take State Highway 90 east 6 miles to Monson Road. Turn left, and go about 1.2 miles to the signed turnoff to Murray Springs. The access road is located on the right.
The Spanish Presidio Santa Cruz de Terrenate is the most intact remaining example of a once-extensive network of similar presidios. These fortresses marked the northern extension of New Spain into the New World. Only a stone foundation and a few remaining adobe wall remnants mark the location of an isolated and dangerous military station. From Fairbank on Highway 82, drive approximately 2 miles west on Highway 82, turn right on the Kellar Ranch Road and travel approximately 3 miles to the trailhead. Hike about 2 miles to the ruins and interpretive displays.
The San Pedro House, located 9 miles east of Sierra Vista on State Highway 90, is a popular trailhead for birdwatchers, hikers, and mountain bikers. The Friends of San Pedro operate a bookstore and information center.
Photo by Bob Wick, BLM.
Inland water systems are permanent water bodies inland from the coastal zone and areas whose properties and use are dominated by the permanent, seasonal, or intermittent occurrence of flooded conditions. Inland waters include rivers, lakes, floodplains, reservoirs, wetlands, and inland saline systems.
For any form of publication, please include the link to this page:
This photo has been graciously provided to be used in the GRID-Arendal resources library by: Philippe Rekacewicz, Emmanuelle Bournay, UNEP/GRID-Arendal
A very simple ecosystem consist of moss, a blooming mushroom and some spider mites...
Any one can see the red legged mites?
we were reading "the ecosystem of a fallen tree" and decided to check out these, cut yes, but still dead logs for inhabitants
Maya brought her trusty magnifying glass and watched the ants
they were hoping to find a chipmunk with acorns in a burrow as seen in the book :D
but we did locate our 2 Oak Trees after I asked them where a chipmunk might find an acorn