Aarey: A green that’s fading

Mumbai: In the middle of the city lies Aarey, an urban oasis that serves as a green lung for a city suffocating under the weight of its own development. It is also a sanctuary to an array of wildlife, some of it rare and vulnerable.
A portion of Aarey was declared a reserved forest in 2020, after years of collective struggle and protests. Just outside, the city’s first underground metro is set to roll in the first week of October.
Inside the ecologically sensitive zone, spread across 25 acres, is the barricaded enclosure of the Metro 3 car shed. It is almost ready, and eerily silent. Nine metro rakes are parked in the shed. An office building is positioned to one side, another building at one end, and yet another for the maintenance of the trains and their smooth operation. All that’s left are minor fixtures.
The green signal has been given by the Commissioner of Metro Railway Safety – the final permission needed for this metro link to be flagged off. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to inaugurate Phase One of Metro 3, from Aarey to the Bandra Kurla Complex, in the first week of October.
There’s a dense patch of trees at the heart of the car shed. This plot has not been needed yet, say Metro officials, although there’s no saying when the axe could fall.
One wonders what the Adivasi padas overlooking the plot think of all this. The land, now developed, was a part of their lives and livelihood. It’s where the indigenous inhabitants used to forage for plants, herbs, roots, vegetables and fruit. A stream flowed through it, now diverted by the Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation Limited (MMRCL), and replaced with an extensive drainage line.
The metro car shed rose from the ashes of a long-drawn-out movement led by environmentalists and citizens. Even though they could not stop the car shed from being built in this green zone, the Save Aarey Movement scored a significant win in 2020: the state government declared 812 acres of uninhabited green cover in Aarey a reserved forest. It’s about a quarter of the total land that once constituted Aarey Colony.
The declaration greatly increased the protection afforded to the land: from an area that was once classified as a No-Development Zone (NDZ) when it was first given to the Aarey Dairy in the 1950s, to an Eco-Sensitive Zone (ESZ) for falling within the buffer zone of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP), to now, partly, a reserved forest.
A win on the face of it, there is still much to be done in the fight to save this green lung. If 25 per cent has been demarcated as a reserved forest, the rest remains vulnerable, with much of what was once verdant land scarified for other uses. Besides, even for the reserved forest, the declaration may not be enough to protect it.
Aarey: The Backstory
Little of Aarey survives in its original glory. It was once a sprawl of 3,162.32 acres, given to the state Dairy Development Department for dairy farms, in 1949. It isn’t and never was entirely a forest, says Shweta Wagh, urban conservationist and Assistant Professor at Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture and Environmental Studies (KRVIA). Warning against the convenient classification, she elaborates, “While it is a green zone, Aarey Colony as a whole has always included a variety of natural and manmade ecosystems and diverse ecological uses. This includes grasslands, agricultural areas, hills, catchment areas and the origins of the Oshiwara and Mithi rivers, while some of it is forest area,” she says.
Ecologists Rajesh Sanap and Zeeshan Mirza, point out that at least five species here are on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, globally. Also in the mix at Aarey are 27 adivasi padas or tribal settlements. They co-exist with the wildlife and live off the vegetation here.
Through the different development plans over the decades, parts of Aarey Colony were parcelled out for different uses. As a result, this green sanctuary houses large complexes such as Film City, the New Zealand hostel, a hospital, Force 1, Royal Palms hotel and golf course, among others. “Barely 45 per cent of Aarey survives in its original state,” says wildlife biologist and ecologist Anand Pendharkar.
In the mid-’90s, the 10.6-km, six-lane Jogeshwari-Vikhroli Link Road (JVLR) sliced right through Aarey, connecting the city’s western and eastern suburbs. Environmentalists say it was the trigger for the shrinking of the city’s green lung.
“While JVLR provided connectivity, its construction also made land parcels available on both sides of the road, i.e Aarey and SEEPZ,” points out Stalin D, director of Vanashakti, a non-profit. “The state should have restricted land grab to the SEEPZ side. Instead, the process of destruction started inside Aarey, towards Tapeshwar temple, with the setting up of the Adani power station. Today, it supplies power to all the new complexes in the area, thereby helping real estate developers in the entire JVLR belt.”
Then, in 2014, another wrecking ball took a swing at Aarey. “The 2014 Draft Development Plan for Greater Mumbai suggested changes in land use here, introducing a zoo, resettlement tenements, tourism areas, and more,” says Wagh. “While it was opposed, these changes were carried forward into the Development Plan, which was finalised in 2016.”
The decision to build the metro car shed inside Aarey in 2014 was the next blow to this eco-sensitive region. The struggle that ensued with environmentalists and civil society protesting the car shed reflected the fractured and disparate claims on land in a city fast running out of space.
“While the state sees the land as an economic resource, developers view it as future real estate, and environmentalists see it as a vital green space within the city. Community organisations, on the other hand, see it through the lens of their livelihood, rituals and histories with the land,” points out Rohan Shivkumar, professor at KRVIA and one of the people behind ‘A Forest in the City’, an exhibition that explored the relationship between people and the environment in Aarey, held in Mumbai earlier this year.
Shivkumar goes on to make a powerful point, “The difficulty is that many of these imaginations are seen as irreconcilable and are often antithetical to each other. In a situation like this, it is the imagination of the most powerful that comes to fruition – in this case, the state and the developer.”
Parcelling out the Green Zone
It isn’t all good news for the 812 acres reserved as forest, either. For one thing, a wall will encircle this zone – separating it from the rest of what remains of the green lung, and creating another fracture within the green zone.
“The demarcation of the reserved forest is now complete,” says an official from the state Forest Department, under whose jurisdiction it falls. “The PWD is in the process of building a wall around the forest,” he adds. Underpasses are also being built to ensure unhindered movement of wildlife to and from the forest area.
For some, however, the wall is not a sign of great things to come. “Setting aside 800 acres as reserved forest was only Phase 1, where open spaces inside Aarey would be protected. Phase 2 aims to protect the green cover in the rest of Aarey, which would require the rehabilitation of slum dwellers and offices,” says Sanjeev Valsan, an environmental and adivasi activist. “With the wall being built, Phase 2 now seems history.” Having protected the reserved forest, he believes the authorities will probably not commit to the rest of the plan.
Wagh makes another compelling argument. She says the wall would break the contiguous nature of the green zone with the SGNP. Wildlife and the streams of rivers that once meandered through the region will no longer enjoy unhindered passage.
Building a wall also threatens to open the door to further fragmentation and destruction of the green spaces in the rest of Aarey. The tacit message is that development outside its perimeter, although still within the green zone, is okay. In fact, a BMC official says the other parcels of land are now primed for all kinds of development, including infrastructure and real estate projects. He reveals that high rises are being planned to house the slum dwellers eligible for rehabilitation. In another alarming development, in October 2023, the state government appointed a consultant to draw up a master plan to monetise Aarey and turn whatever was left into a tourism spot.
What the Future Holds
There’s another sinister truth lurking in this green expanse. Environmentalists point out that demarcating 812 acres as a reserved forest has little meaning.
“Reserved forests can be denotified,” Pendharkar says. “Take the neighbouring SGNP itself. From the 104 sq km on paper, it has dwindled to 89 sq km as parcels of it keep being degraded due to infrastructure relating to roads, the bullet train, etc.”
The battle of environmentalists and civil society is now for a long-term plan for the area. They point out that while the Supreme Court’s 2019 blanket ban on deforestation offers protection to Aarey Colony – excluding the metro car shed site, where more than 2,000 trees were axed in 2019 – permanent protection is vital.
“Aarey is vulnerable,” says Stalin. “For instance, if the courts uphold a government proposal projected as being in public interest, the green zone will have to be sacrificed. The only hope is to get Aarey declared as a conservation reserve.” This would strengthen its protection under the law.