Tag: Cities
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Cities – Far Away from Nature?
Global populations continue to urbanise at an unprecedented rate, with cities expanding into huge concentrations of concrete, steel, and glass, raising sustainability concerns. I’ve attempted to explore this issue from the standpoint of urban ecology, an interdisciplinary branch of study that looks at the complex interactions between the built environment of cities and non-human species.
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Gatekeeping “Access”: Exploring Caveats to Public Greenspace Use for the Urban Poor
Planning processes institutionalise the will of the politically powerful, shaping cities where equal access to urban public greenspace is several steps too far for the urban poor, quite literally and quietly figuratively. Environmental justice scholarship needs to integrate quantitative and qualitative measurements of access to understand what influences greenspace use along socio-economic indicators.
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Disciplining Non-human Bodies in the City
Aditi Dhillon & Ajay Immanuel Gonji In his seminal essay Why Look at Animals? John Berger (2009) talks about how, in the past, people kept domestic animals because they were useful to them – as guard dogs, hunting dogs, mice-killing cats, and so on. Later, people began to keep animals regardless of their usefulness, a…
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Life in the Fastlane: Roadkill in the Anthropocene
Ajay Immanuel Gonji My first close encounter with roadkill was during fieldwork for my Master’s internship, way back in 2013. I remember seeing the bloated body of a large male nilgai, fully intact, on the footpath of the Aruna Asaf Ali Marg – a 6-lane highway bifurcating the Sanjay Van city forest and the Jawaharlal…
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WATER QUALITY OF THE YAMUNA RIVER DURING THE FIRST LOCKDOWN
Divya Mehra and Shiwani The Coronavirus pandemic which has affected almost every part of the world is considered to be the biggest economic and health crisis of the present time. To contain the spread of the Covid-19 disease, in the initial phases of the pandemic, many countries went into lockdown, resulting in the temporary suspension…
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Exploring the Behaviour of Urban Wildlife
Ajay Immanuel Gonji For many of us, our first encounter with animals was probably at home with cats and dogs, or on the streets with cows, chickens and so on. These creatures may be called ‘domestic’ because their lifeworlds almost entirely revolve around human beings. On the other hand are creatures that are collectively referred…
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Rights to a ‘World-class’ City
Ajay Immanuel Gonji In a previous blog article, I had mentioned that in many Indian cities, there exists a certain shared precarity between poor humans and non-humans in access and rights to the city, and both groups are often similarly excluded (Narayanan & Bindumadhav, 2019). In this present article, I wish to elaborate on this…
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Unique Disposition of Urban Wildlife
Ajay Immanuel Gonji Urban Landscapes and Wildlife Urban landscapes are unique in that they represent one of the most managed and domesticated landscapes on the planet (Kareiva et al., 2007) that have been modified to fulfil not just our needs but also our wants. However, interestingly, Urban landscapes, by their very nature, also offer distinct…
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Understanding the Sounds of Animals
Himanshu Choudhery With the advancement of technologies over the past several years, the field of animal conservation has significantly evolved. Earlier, with the limitation of proper tools, there were many impediments to conservation programmes. Now, with the help of new tools such as bio-logging and bio-telemetry, camera traps, drones, sound recorders and advanced digital technologies,…
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Conservation Through Citizen Science
Himanshu Choudhery Worldwide, the field of biological conservation has been increasingly seeing the involvement of people of all ages. From amateur wildlife explorers to the more experienced ones, everyone is actively contributing to the conservation of biodiversity. This active participation and collaboration of the general public with professionals in scientific research is known as citizen science.…