Are Commonwealth Youth Games green games!

None of the green projects for the Commonwealth Youth Games have actually seen the light of day. Instead of planting more trees, 7000 of the existing trees were cut to make way for road widening projects for the games..

TOUTED AS the ’green games’, the Commonwealth Youth Games (CYG) have now started. While there has been a lot of talk about the ’greenery’ of these games by the organising committee, all the projects related to the ’green’ aspect have just remained on paper. It has just been used to give the games hype with hardly any groundwork to make these games environment friendly.

Early this year, the CYG organising committee, which is also the organising committee of the Commonwealth Games to be held in Delhi in 2010, signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), projecting the Pune games as environment-friendly games. In the undertaking given to UNEP, the organising committee said that the games would focus on waste and water management, forestation, anti-litter campaign and sustainable transport, with the ride-and-return-cycle project.

“Rainwater harvesting, waste water treatment and recycling plant, insulated roofs, heat reflecting surfaces, low floor sanitary fittings, solar water heaters and cross ventilation are some features of the under construction buildings in Balewadi,” the presentation said. However, none of these projects have actually seen the light of day. According to details from PMC’s garden department, instead of planting more trees, 7000 of the existing trees were cut to make way for road widening projects for CYG.

While no provisions are in place for rainwater harvesting at the Balewadi facilities, there are hardly any arrangements to even drain out the wastewater from the rains. The tennis stadium is open air, and rainwater flowing down the roof over the spectator area falls into the playing area and remains accumulated there in absence of a requisite slope. The world-class standard open-air 50-mtr shooting range is also plagued by a similar fault. The range is entirely done up in wood, but without any arrangements to protect it from rains. We found that the rainwater has literally drenched the wood.

The other projects like solar water heaters, cross ventilation, waste management, anti-litter campaign, sustainable transport, no plastic at Balewadi, extensive tree plantation etc, have failed to take off. In fact, amid protests from residents at Uruli Devachi village, which houses the city’s dumping ground, the garbage bins around the city have started overflowing.

The much publicised ’Ride and Return Cycle Project’, which was touted as being the legacy for the city, as a sustainable transport system, has also fallen apart. The project involved a 200-kilometre cycle track on the main roads, with cycle stations at intervals of 20 kilometres, where people can rent a cycle at a nominal cost and deposit it at any other station.

Ranjit Gadgil, a Lead India finalist, who was to head the ride-and-return-cycle project, confirmed that the project had fallen apart. “The organising committee had called me to implement the pilot of the project as a part of the games. The pilot needed an investment of Rs 50 lakh and later the organising committee told me that they were waiting for the money to come from the municipal corporation, which never came and I came out of the project. The project was being implemented haphazardly, with no planning. They had not even prepared a DPR of the project and now the project has fallen apart.”

Source: http://www.merinews.com