Preserving the Green Belt

The 2001 Perspective Master Plan designates the Green Belt, the area surrounding the city, as being for forestry, farming and recreation. However, at present Auroville owns only 35% of the Green Belt which includes six villages with a total population six times that of Auroville. As the population of the villages is growing at a much faster rate than that of Auroville, there is concern that they will expand in a disharmonious manner. Meanwhile, the Green Belt area has become increasingly attractive to developers planning private housing projects.

In other words, the Green Belt concept is increasingly under threat. What can be done about this? While the Town Development Council controls the development of Auroville-owned land, presently they do not have planning authority over privately owned land, which includes land within and around the villages. Hence the sensitivity of a topic like village growth management, which can be interpreted as Auroville attempting to tell the villagers how they can develop on their own land.

The Canadian students began by doing extensive research while still in Canada. Among other things, they conducted phone and Skype interviews with Auroville planners, other community members and village resource people. The main findings included:

1) In the villages, land ownership and status are closely connected.

2) Auroville is perceived by the State governments as being “not important, not cooperative” and Auroville planners are perceived as being “Auroville-centric”.

3) Increased communication and consultation with the villages is necessary but Auroville lacks the manpower and resources to do this at present.

4) The villagers want farming to continue in their area.

5) However, many villagers prefer officework to farming.

6) Sale of land is seen as a more significant and immediate gain than farming.

Changing focus in Auroville

The students conducted more interviews after they arrived as well as on-site visits to Alankuppam village, which was taken as the focus study area. “When we got here we were surprised that there were many different points of view,” says Anna, one of the students, “because this didn’t come across from the interviews we had done from Canada. Even between the villagers, everybody had different perspectives about the direction they wanted the village to take.”

“The older villagers remember how it used to be,” says Philip, another student. “They have seen how the lifestyle of the villages and the environment around here improved because of Auroville and are happy to let things develop in their own way. But the younger villagers who have not witnessed this just want to get what Auroville has now.”

The students also learned that while the local landowners are most concerned about economic security and maintaining a certain cultural heritage, Aurovilians favour a more holistic, environmental development of the Green Belt.

Consequently, the students concluded that the issue of growth in the Green Belt must be addressed from both Auroville’s and the villagers’ perspectives. “So while one of the main objectives for the project was to preserve the Green Belt, another was to preserve its villages,” says Meghan, the student project manager.

She also confirmed that since arriving in Auroville and understanding better the complexities, they had broadened the scope of their project. “Instead of trying to define a specific strategy, we decided to develop a framework for a future growth management strategy. In our view, completing the steps in this framework would allow Auroville to ultimately develop and implement an effective growth management strategy for the Green Belt.”

The steps include continuing to strengthen a collaborative relationship with the villages. The latter also represented an important shift. The proposals the students had developed in Canada had tended to emphasise a more top-down approach to controlling activities in the Green Belt. “However, it’s one thing to consider something like legislation in the context of Canada,” says Philip, “and another thing to come here and talk to people who understand the system. They told us that the political atmosphere and many other considerations do not make legislation the only effective tool. So then we focussed more on bottom-up approaches.”

The framework

The proposed framework was presented to a well-attended meeting of Aurovilians on 15th December. It was intended to achieve the following objectives:

A) To develop measures to preserve Green Belt lands for the intended uses outlined in the Perspective Master Plan

B) To develop measures to manage development within the Green Belt on privately owned lands

C) To facilitate a collaborative and mutually beneficial planning relationship between Auroville, the villages and state planning authorities

The study suggested that future mapping of land in the Green Belt should include data on soil quality and biodiversity and that a weighted mapping system be developed to identify, for example, the location of prime agricultural land.

The study also proposed that Auroville develop an environmental youth education plan for residents of the bioregion to help them understand and support future environmental protection programmes. Meanwhile, a Farmers Forum could be set up where Auroville farmers could discuss with local farmers how to improve land viability. Auroville could also offer more training programmes in sustainable agriculture.

As to the issue of controlling what happens on Green Belt lands, the study concludes that land purchase and land exchanges remain the best solution. However, it also mentions that certain ‘market-based’ solutions, like the possibility of purchasing development rights on private land or land leasing, could be explored if viable in the future.

Communication with the neighbours

The need to improve communication between Auroville and the villages was an important topic. For example, the students noted that many villagers do not understand the concept of a ‘Green Belt’. In fact, while many Auroville groups are working on outreach in the bioregion, it was observed that there was no consistency in how they communicate about Auroville, and sometimes contradictory messages are sent.

The study suggests that a Collaboration Hub be set up to provide for exchanges of information and resources between Auroville and local villages. Also, that an impact assessment be made of existing village outreach initiatives to help Auroville determine if the activities carried out in the villages are producing the changes they set out to accomplish, and to identify any gaps that may exist.

Alongside this, there should be a community asset assessment to help each of the villages in the area to understand their skills and strengths. This would help empower the villages to take up their own development initiatives.

The main purpose in all this is to build better relationships with the villages so that a transparent planning process for the Green Belt area can be created in a spirit of collaboration. At the same time, developing a regional plan for the Green Belt area requires a good relationship with the two state governments involved – Tamil Nadu and Puducherry. This aspect, the study notes, needs to be worked on further, particularly in respect of our relationship with the Puducherry Government.

Ratify the Greenbelt development plan

The study noted that Auroville planners warned that a growth management strategy for the Green Belt must be created within the next five to seven years, or by 2025 at the latest. Beyond 2025, management of growth in this area may become much more difficult for Auroville to address due to disproportionate rates of growth within the region.

To aid timely implementation of the strategy, the study suggests certain things need to happen. These include the ratification of the 2011 Green Belt Development Plan by the State governments, the setting up of a Green Belt Collaboration Hub with the villages and the creation of an assessment toolkit to ascertain if the goals of the project are being attained.

The study stressed that all proposed solutions must be evaluated from the perspectives of both Auroville and village residents.

Reception

The presentation was well received. Cristo, an ex-member of the Town Development Council who has been active in setting up Development Councils in some local villages, was particularly appreciative and felt that the recommendations were very much to the point. Others agreed that better communication and collaboration with the villages were essential if the Green Belt was to remain ‘green’.

However, certain questions remain. Clearly, the groundwork for the implementation of a development plan for the Green Belt will require additional resources, both human and financial. At present, not enough Aurovilians are involved in this work – and, perhaps, not interested in this work – while our farmers, for example, are already overstretched. So it is not clear where the extra resources will come from.

There are also certain doubts about the comprehensiveness of the information the students gleaned from their interviews. All the villagers they spoke to, it seems, were positive about Auroville and all wanted farming to continue near the villages. We do not always hear this. Perhaps the fact the students were only here for two weeks, that they only visited one village, and that the focus groups were selected for them meant that they did not meet a fully representative sample.

The key question, however, remains whether Auroville’s concept of the Green Belt can survive, given factors like Auroville’s lack of legislative ‘muscle’, the absence of interest of many young villagers in farming and the lure of immediate wealth offered by speculators eager to develop land in this area.

“One of the things we heard from the villagers is that before they can care about environmental factors, which is the ultimate goal of the Green Belt, they have to look after their basic needs first,” says Philip. “After all, why would you care about the Green Belt if you can’t feed your family?”

In fact, the villagers made clear that their top priority is improvements in infrastructure – water, electricity, roads. Education is also a big concern. “A lot of the people we talked to,” says Philip, “told us that one of the main reasons that land is being sold, and not necessarily to Auroville, is because they want a better life for the next generation, and this would typically come through education, which can be costly.”

So can raising the standard of living in the villages benefit protection of the Green Belt? Philip believes it can. “In the western area there are plans for a water purification system which would service not only Auroville but also some of the villages. This would both help to increase the villagers’ quality of life and take away their fear of not having sufficient water. This, hopefully, would lead to more sustainable water practices that would not tax the water table.

“And if farmers benefit from better farming practices while the general quality of life improves in the villages, maybe the villagers would think twice about selling their land to speculators and developers. They may not sell to Auroville either, but if the land is farmed well it would keep the Green Belt concept alive, even if Auroville doesn’t have direct control of the land.”

Lalit, the Aurovilian coordinator of the project, is very pleased with the students’ work. “These people have been catalysts. Their work has brought to our attention things we need to look at urgently because the growth of the surrounding villages is of great relevance to Auroville’s own development. The different outreach activities of Auroville, like Village Action, have laid a fantastic groundwork over the years, but now a different approach to the villages is needed because the rules of the game have changed. These are no longer the traditional villages that, out of respect for The Mother, gave away land to Auroville in the early years.

“If we can find a new way to relate to the surrounding villages, we could create a viable model which Auroville not only needs for its own survival, but which is in line with what Mother wanted of Auroville: to respect and to work collaboratively with its neighbours.

“The students have provided a good framework for the next step. If Auroville does not act upon it, we will be facing a very serious situation in the Green Belt in a few years. However, I am hopeful. I think a certain synergy has been lacking in our different outreach development initiatives but today we are beginning to join the dots, and we are better prepared to take these issues head-on rather than shying away because they are too hot.”

As to the larger picture, Lalit sees the ongoing collaboration with students from Queen’s University as a model which Auroville may increasingly adopt in the future. “I see this as an example of how world energy and expertise can plug into Auroville by researching topics of relevance to us, especially when we do not have the required manpower or expertise to address issues essential to Auroville’s holistic growth.”