Published: February 2024 (2 years ago) in issue Nº 415
Keywords: International Advisory Council (IAC), Master Plan (Perspective 2025), Crown Road, Crown clearing, Dreamweaving, Radial roads, Outer Ring Road, Tree cutting, Governing Board, Auroville Foundation Act, 1988 and Green cities
Statement issued by two members of the Auroville International Advisory Council
We would like to record our strong disapproval of the current felling of trees in Auroville, including the one close to the Auroville Library and Solar Kitchen today, for the following reasons:
1. The current plan of a Crown road, a ring road and 12 radial roads, is an invention which violates the Master Plan 2001. The Master Plan nowhere demands that the Crown Road or the Outer Ring Road should be perfect circles; it also nowhere prescribes a number of radial roads, now arbitrarily fixed at 12, without a proper traffic circulation plan. It only provides a broad framework and insists that “it will neither be traditional, nor static and rigid.” After a gap of over two decades the first task should have been to revisit the Master Plan, instead of falsely claiming to follow it.
2. The Master Plan called for integrated planning. Over the years, several of Auroville’s urban planners, architects, water management and environmental experts produced plans (sometimes also DDPs), all of which were brushed aside by the current administration.
3. One such plan (there were others) was the one worked out by the Dreamweaving process, which the Auroville community at large supported. The Dreamweaving output was acknowledged by the Governing Board but, again, ignored and brushed aside, allowing the administration to push on with its own unapproved plan.
4. The Master Plan 2001 gives central importance to environmental considerations. For instance, “There cannot be a complete freedom for individuals, groups of individuals or institutions to carry out developments without consideration for the surrounding environment. ... Development proposals will be considered only ... if effectively eco-friendly and environmentally appropriate ...” And most importantly: “Innovative models and techniques in the field of afforestation, land development, water conservation, rainwater harvesting, building technology, community participation, energy saving, etc. incorporated in the Master Plan would be integral to the township development and management.”
5. Incomprehensibly, the current administration has shown total contempt for this vision, in effect imposing on Auroville an unapproved plan which has seen no consultative process, in violation of the Auroville Foundation Act and the very spirit of Auroville (contrast with the Dreamweaving process, which saw widespread consultation over months). Its plans are clearly not “eco-friendly and environmentally appropriate”.
6. Examples of this woeful lack of vision sadly abound: the hugely wasteful concrete blocks used for road making, which will have severe consequences on water circulation; the unnecessary width of the planned roads (we are told that some of those widths have recently been much increased, with no rational justification); the untimely plans for an “Outer Ring Road”, when the presence of numerous private lands and whole villages on its path restrict it to less than a third of a circle, making it an impossibility at this point of time; and the dogmatic, rigid unwillingness to deviate from perfect circles when even slight deviations could have helped save well-forested areas or precious water bodies.
Based on our direct observations of the ground situation and discussions with many stakeholders, our conclusion is that the current frenzy of massive tree-cutting is wholly unjustifiable. It is a cruel act against Nature, when the need worldwide is not only to protect Nature but integrate it in our lives, in education, and in our cities.
The world over, new concepts of “green cities” of different kinds, based on such an integration, are being urgently pushed forward. This was precisely what Mother wanted Auroville to be: not an ordinary city of concrete, but one that would show the path to the future.
Regrettably, the current administration, unrestrained by the Governing Board, is showing instead a path to a destructive past.
We call for a halt to all tree cutting in Auroville and other works until the current plans are reviewed by genuine experts, modified to integrate environmental considerations at every step, and approved by the community just as the Dreamweaving process was.