Celebrating Tree Walk

An early memory is of scrambling halfway up the guava tree in the backyard of our house in Bangalore. And of the joy and sense of accomplishment that came from making it that far up. I didn’t realise it then, but I was fortunate to belong to a generation of urban Indian children who had unfettered access to trees, yards and the outdoors.

Trees are especially on my mind because Tree Walk Thiruvananthapuram celebrated its eighth birthday last week. It was on 12 May 2012 that the first tree walk was held along the city’s Vanchiyoor ‘green corridor’.

Exploring the city's Museum complex

While it’s often described as an “environmental collective,” I’ve always seen Tree Walk as a group of people who are interested in and care about trees. A group that comes together to observe, understand, protect and document Thiruvananthapuram’s tree cover. 

Membership of Tree Walk is largely informal, and sometimes transient, but at its core is a committed group helmed by Anitha Sharma and her sister Santhi. Set up in memory of botanist and tree-lover Dr C. Thankam, who was also Anitha’s and Santhi’s mother, Tree Walk traces its roots to Harithakootayama, a group that was formed in 2008 to discover how people in the city viewed trees and the equation between trees and road development. For in the early 2000s, Thiruvananthapuram — like many cities across the country — embarked on a ‘development’ journey focused on bolstering built infrastructure; a journey that often hinged on cutting down trees.

Early on, Tree Walk was largely about walks to understand and explore trees in different parts of Thiruvananthapuram. Most of these walks — over a hundred till now — were on Sunday mornings in the city’s public green spaces such as parks and along roads, but also in semi-private areas, including school and college campuses.

Preserving the city’s green pockets has always been a part of Tree Walk’s raison d’etre. But this aspect took on a special urgency in 2013 when the city authorities decided to take over a large part of the Attakulangara Central High School campus in the heart of Thiruvananthapuram to construct a bus terminal and shops. A project that would require scores of trees to be axed.

Handout from a walk in the East Fort Heritage Zone

This action saw Tree Walk evolving into a pressure group that worked with other civil society groups on a spirited campaign to save the school — established in the late 1880s — and its green campus. Across several months, the group organised various activities, including several walks and a tree survey to create awareness about how the planned bus terminal would obliterate a significant slice of the city’s irreplaceable natural heritage.

Ultimately, sense prevailed within the State Government. The bus station project was redesigned and the decision to use the school’s land was scrapped.

Alongside, Tree Walk also embarked on several other projects — a butterfly garden on the premises of the State Central Library or Public Library, special walks for school students, collaborating with nature clubs in the city’s schools to document the biodiversity on school campuses and, just a few months ago, an intervention to ‘heal’ a badly mutilated jasmine tree that stands outside the Saphalyam Complex on the city’s arterial MG Road.

Early this year, during the Mathrubhumi International Festival of Letters, Tree Walk held a series of walks designed to introduce the lit-fest’s authors and speakers to some of the city’s special trees. A friend I’d recommended the walks to declared, “It was a fabulous experience.”

Thiruvananthapuram's natural and built heritage harmonise in East Fort

And that’s a sentiment I can relate to. As I wrote in National Geographic Traveller some years ago, I’ve found these freewheeling walks to be a great way to discover facets of the city that would otherwise pass right by us.

As Tree Walk embarks on its ninth year, it is a period of uncertainty; a time when humanity is facing an existential crisis of the sort that no living person has experienced. Even in the midst of this gloom, I can’t help but hope that this crisis we face will give us all at least a sliver of understanding about how vital the natural world’s health is to our own health and wellbeing.

And since I haven’t been on a tree walk for many months now, I look forward to a Sunday — any day for that matter — when we can embark on one. For Tree Walk is quite simply one of my city’s gems; not always in the public eye, but a gem nonetheless.

Exiting the lockdown

A version of this article was in Outlook’s online edition in early April. This piece was written in collaboration with Dr M.I. Sahadulla, Chairman and Managing Director, KIMS Healthcare Group and the author of Vital Signs: Reflections on a Life in Medicine and Management.

Pandemics are not particularly new. In fact, Covid-19 is simply the latest in a long line of pandemics. But this one has a rather modern streak. For the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19 has used the connectedness of our globalised world to spread. And spread with such speed and stealth, that containment — keeping the virus out — has proved to be almost impossible.

Clouds of uncertainty, but rays of hope in the distance...

Most nations have largely turned to variations of a shutdown — what Singapore’s Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong, evocatively called “a circuit breaker” — to reduce the spread of Covid-19. The intention behind these shutdowns is to try and prevent, or at least curtail, the spread of the virus by limiting social interactions. This is because social interaction typically influences the rate at which a pandemic, especially a respiratory virus pandemic, spreads.

In India, the 21-day shutdown that began at midnight on 24 March has involved closing workplaces, shutting most public transport systems, shutting educational institutions, severely curtailing movements and gatherings of people and asking everyone to stay at home. But effectively implementing a shutdown in a country of over 1.2 billion people, from diverse socio-economic conditions, comes with its own set of challenges. Overcoming these challenges calls for coordinated, empathetic action by governments across the country, even as we throw everything we have at controlling the virus.

Yet, we also need to think about the future — not just medium or long term, but also the next few weeks and months. We need an exit strategy or post-shutdown plan that protects our wellbeing even as it bolsters our economy. Here are some options to consider:

Continue mobilising public health resources: Over the coming weeks — during the lockdown and even after it’s eased — we must use all our public health resources, including more testing, to curtail the spread of Covid-19 and ensure that the infection rate stays very low. At the same time, we need to recognise that the virus could probably linger in pockets for some time to come. Therefore, we must be part of the global effort to develop preventive vaccines or medicines that treat Covid-19. 

Launch a massive education campaign: It’s not easy to change our behaviour in the best of times. But at this moment, behavioural changes such as adopting basic hygiene practices or staying away from one another are vital to control the spread of Covid-19. Of course, given the conditions that large sections of our population live in, adopting these practices isn’t easy; so we need to create alternatives where possible. But adopt them we must.

This is why we need to invest more in campaigns to advocate responsible practices — cleaning hands, physical distancing from other people, staying at home when asked to and so on. Such behaviour needs to become second nature; something we all do on our own, without any coercion. While governments have already launched such campaigns fronted by celebrities, perhaps it’s time we considered innovative options including applying behavioural insights to these initiatives.  

Gradual easing of the shutdown: India’s national lockdown is scheduled to end on 14 April. Even if all goes well and the number of Covid-19 cases in the country stays relatively low, it makes better sense for the government to lift restrictions only gradually and cautiously. This is important to ensure there is no immediate resurgence of the virus from increased social interactions.

Controlled resumption of economic activity: The pandemic’s impact on the global economy is already being felt. Some of us can work from home. But India has millions of people who do not have that option. So in the weeks ahead, it’s important to consider ‘reopening’ key sectors of the economy ­—with strict physical distancing, hygiene norms and other controls in place. This reopening has to be carefully planned and even more carefully executed.

Make public health a focus area: Any investment in public health helps to prevent diseases and leads to the improved overall health of the population. But in India, healthcare, and public health in particular, has not received the governmental attention and financial support it merits. This must change immediately. India needs to view public health not as crisis management, but as a long-term priority.

We also need to make the ‘one health’ approach an integral part of our public health strategy. This involves recognising that our health is connected to the health of animals, plants and the environment that we all share. It, therefore, emphasises that efforts to prevent disease should focus not just on human, but also on animal, plant and environmental health. We really can’t afford to ignore this idea, given that SARS-CoV-2 is believed to have animal origins.

Pay special attention to mental health: The upheavals caused by Covid-19 are affecting every aspect of our lives. All of us are, understandably, beset by worries about money and about our own health and that of our loved ones. Bereft of our usual coping mechanisms such as social gatherings or even regular work routines, this anxiety could very easily spiral into mental health issues. So we need to allocate resources to mental wellness programmes.