Salonee Mistry retweetledi
While this first-ever academic valuation of Vetal Tekdi demolishes the PMC's economic argument for destroying nature's gift to Pune, even the most well-meaning environmental valuation is thinking like a builder!
Here's why it is still a gross undervaluation of a priceless asset :
1. A 65-million-year-old ecosystem cannot be rebuilt. Destruction is irreversible. Irreversibility has infinite cost.
2. The forest cools entire neighbourhoods. Every home, hospital and school that avoids an air conditioner owes something to Vetal Tekdi.
3. It filters the air for millions of lungs every single day. No number was put on a single breath.
4. It holds Pune's floods back. The stormwater it absorbs silently saves the city infrastructure costs every monsoon.
5. The genetic and medicinal wealth of its plant species — part of a global biodiversity hotspot — was left entirely unvalued.
6. The mental health of a city cannot be itemised. But it can be destroyed, permanently, by a road.
7. Future generations were not consulted. Their share of this inheritance is not in the table.
8. Ancient aquifers recharge on geological timescales. Once broken, they do not come back in any human lifetime.
9. The existence of wild, living, breathing nature inside a city of 7 million is itself a gift beyond accounting.
10. Some assets belong on no balance sheet — because they are the condition under which all other value is possible.
#SaveVetalTekdi #ScrapBBRoad
sushma date@sushmadate
The first economic valuation of Vetal Tekdi - by @priti_mastakar of Gokhale Institute Quarry wetland - ₹ 98.28 cr Carbon sequestration - ₹16 L Oxygen production - ₹ 6.69 cr Biodiversity - ₹1.54 cr Aquifers - ₹ 14,62,000 cr (!!) Heritage- ₹ 7.44 cr Valuation for mental health and psychological well being- priceless! 💚 THERE ARE SOME THINGS MONEY JUST CAN'T BUY. #SaveVetalTekdi #ScrapBBRoad
English
