Welcome To
Centre for Urban Ecology and Sustainability
Our Mission
The Centre for Urban Ecology and Sustainability (CUES) aims to address urban ecological issues with a view to offering solutions, and develop a skilled cohort of professionals who actively engage in, and find solutions for urban ecological challenges. The Centre serves as a focal point where researchers, government & non-governmental, citizens and private agencies converge and participate in the planning, implementation, and evaluation of sustainable environmental projects in cities. CUES collaborates actively with other schools and centres in AUD like the School of Human Ecology, School of Development Studies (SDS), School of Design (SDS), Centre for Community Knowledge (CCK) on areas of common interests. The Centre envisages to build linkages with teaching and research programmes within the University to provide students with hands-on learning, field practicum and engaged scholarship opportunities. The Centre hosts interactions and dialogues between Universities and other organizations in the city across thematics in urban sustainability.
News in Your Inbox
Subscribe to our website to receive updates from our Centre.
Our Blogs
-
Plight of Granivorous Birds in Urban Landscapes
Shashank Bhardwaj Introduction When people talk about House Sparrow, it reminds me of my vivid childhood memories in Delhi. I remember sitting with my mother in the open veranda in the scorching heat of summer, helping her with household chores like cleaning, and storing wheat grains. At times, my mother would get occupied with other…
-
Locust In The City
Vijaylakshmi Suman The rise of the pandemic resulted in people being confined to their homes for months. Since then, a lot of news has emerged where people in the city had witnessed instances of ‘reclamation by nature’. For some, it was a sign of reclamation and recovery, while some quoted this as an absence of…
-
Where Access is Denied
Ajay Immanuel Gonji Introduction Urban ecology is an evolving framework which integrates society and the environment at multiple scales. And while urban ecologists look for commonalities across urban ecosystems, in recent times, there has been much focus on the local and unique contexts which shape the socio-ecological character of each city (Grimm et al., 2015).…
-
A Healthcare System Which Cares About Women
Himanshu Choudhery Amidst COVID-19, when the situation in India is getting severe day by day, our public health care system seems to have come under considerable scrutiny for the several loopholes that have surfaced. While most of the hospitals are converted into COVID care centres, people are barely getting admitted to the hospitals for other…
-
How to Map Changes Using Landviewer – A Step by Step Guide
Shiwani Maps are extremely handy tools that can be used to visualize and illustrate a wide variety of complex data, that make interpretation of geographical information an engaging process. It helps us in making sense of comprehensive spatial relationships simultaneously with temporal changes. There was a time when mapping changes, accessing and studying remote areas…
-
Cities – Emerging Hotspots for Infectious Diseases
Divya Mehra Cities and pandemics have shared a long history and over the decades it has been witnessed that cities have emerged to be the epicentre for infectious diseases. This is often attributed to its very nature – the population densities and inter/intra connections have turned out to be the important factors. Cities act as…
-
Quarantine Ecologies: The Spectacular Return of Animals
Kartik Chugh As the world is reeling from the effects of the pandemic, a barrage of writing has recently emerged linking COVID-19 to the ‘healing’ of Earth. Lockdown measures of confinement have birthed novel ecologies of abandonment which have altered the rhythms and mobilities of both humans and non-humans. The absence of humans has led…
-
Lockdown Effects: Conditioning of Stray Dogs to Vehicular Traffic
Fizala Tayebulla Street dogs have become one of the very few animals that us humans could watch and access from our locked-in houses in cities. As humans limited their movement and remained mostly within premises of their homes, commuting in vehicles- a typical urban activity came to a standstill. City roads became unusually quiet and…
-
Nature Through a Shifting Lens
Vijaylakshmi A few days back, during one of the conversations with my friends, we were reminiscing about some old travel memories and how effortless it was to have a small weekend getaway from the hustle and bustle of the city. We would generally plan a vacation out of the city as an opportunity to be…
-
Adaptability of Wetland Birds to Changing Landscapes
Himanshu Choudhery The advent of the industrial revolution paved the way for massive industries and settlements to be set up in new areas, that we now call cities and towns. Due to this, a large number of people from rural areas have settled down in cities in search for employment and a ‘better life’. As…
CUES Restoration Project Site: Dheerpur Wetland, Delhi
Description:
Restoration of Dheerpur Wetlands: A collaboration of CUES, AUD & DDA
The marshes and wetlands of the Yamuna region once extended from Azadpur to the present-day banks of the river. This region has been heavily drained and undergone an extensive land-use change during the last fifty years. Remnants of once widespread historical marshes can now only be seen near Jahangirpuri, Dheerpur and Burari. Since wetlands are increasingly appreciated globally and nationally for their socio-ecological functions and provisions, the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) decided to restore the wetlands of Dheerpur.
Fragments of these wetlands have been filled up, dyked, dried and carved out for seasonal agriculture. Hence, it may not be sufficient to only stop their further degradation of wetlands of Dheerpur but would also be necessary to restore them for posterity. With this view, the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) has entered into a Management Agreement with Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD), in which the land ownership remains with DDA, and AUD would restore the wetlands. DDA would assist in civil work, funding research and restoration work, whereas AUD is entrusted with providing technical guidance for restoration and maintenance of the wetlands.
The Management Agreement for Dheerpur Wetland Project between AUD and DDA was signed on 17 February 2015. Following which the project was formally inaugurated on 19th June 2015.
Click here to read more on the Dheerpur Wetland Restoration
Location:
Dheerpur Wetland Project Site, Gandhi Vihar, Gopalpur Village,
Delhi 110009
Visiting hours:
10am – 5pm
Project Initiated:
Delhi, June 2015
