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Mumbai:
In the tenth episode of the Horizons series, presenters Adam Shaw
and Saima Mohsin visit Bangalore, India and Tianjin, China to see
whether the need for urban expansion can be balanced with reducing
the impact on natural resources and the environment.
In
the next 20 years there are expected to be nearly two billion new
city dwellers, with most of this growth taking place in the developing
world.
In
North East China, Adam Shaw travels to Tianjin Eco-City to visit
what has been described as the world’s largest Eco-City development.
A joint venture between the governments of China and Singapore but
in partnership with private sector developers; the project covers
30 square kilometres of previously abandoned land and by 2020 is
anticipated to become home to 350,000 people.
Adam
meets Ho Tong Yen, Chief Executive of the Sino-Singapore Eco-city
Investment & Development Company to find out aboutthe challenges
involved in being commercially viable as well as green.
Ho Tong Yen said: “What we’re trying to do is to make
sure what we do here can be done elsewhere. So we are aiming for
20% renewable energy, and we ensure the homes we build here are
much greener than our usual business but not to the extent that
cost rises beyond what the market can support.”
Later,
Adam meets Richard Register, one of the world’s leading theorists
in ecological urban planning and the man credited with coining the
term ‘Eco-City.’ Adam and Richard discuss the problems
of defining what the term ‘eco-city’ means and the importance
of changing the way we look at urban development.
Saima
Mohsin travels to Bangalore to visit two eco-friendly housing developments,
which aim to be almost entirely independent from the civic infrastructure
for water and electricity, using mainly renewable energy sources.
At Zed Earth she talks to some of the residents to see how low carbon
living is reducing their energy bills.
Saima
also meets economist turned eco-entrepreneur Chandrashekar Hariharan,
to discuss the issues facing India as the demand for new buildings
grows.
Chandrashekar
Hariharan, Chairman, BCIL – Biodiversity Conservation India
Ltd said: “The building industry as well as the customer needs
to see that every certified building will result in a 30% reduction
in the use of energy post occupancy, around 20% in the course of
construction of that building, a 50% reduction in the demand for
fresh water in such a building. To me this is a sort of microcosm
of the sort of cities that will happen in the next 15 years. That
will have to happen. This is an imperative, these are not alternatives.
You need to get at least 3% of the building industry to be doing
what we’re doing then in 30 or maybe 40 years we will all get
sustainable.”
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