Urban Ecology and Global Climate Change. Группа авторов

University Varanasi Uttar Pradesh India

      Prachi Sinha Ministry of Home Affairs Government of India National Investigation Agency New Delhi Delhi India

      Sujata Sinha Department of Botany Deen Dayal Upadhyaya College (University of Delhi) New Delhi Delhi India

      Pratap Srivastava Department of Botany Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Post‐graduate College University of Allahabad Prayagraj India

      Gul‐e‐Noor Tanjina Hasnat Institute of Forestry and Environmental Sciences University of Chittagong Chittagong Bangladesh

      Pramit Verma Institute of Environment & Sustainable Development (IESD) Banaras Hindu University Varanasi Uttar Pradesh India

      Foreword

       R. K. Kohli

      Nature produces enough for everyone's need. It also has in place the cyclic processes for the regeneration of nature's gifts. However, for his convenience man has introduced the concept of settlements in urban areas, beyond their carrying capacities. Hardly has any country evaluated the natural resource‐carrying capacity of any area before the settlement of human population. This has not only disturbed the natural balance resulting in consequential impacts reflected in the form of pollution of air, water, soil, sound, and creation of perceptible urban heat island and thermal inversions but also resulted in social unrest, increased crimes, irritability, and impaction on human health.

      Unfortunately, man evaluates every action in terms of economics without realising that the man‐made currency does not follow the currency and principles of nature. The economists and ecologists unfortunately had been contradicting each other. The former had always been winning, and the latter cribbing. However, the last laugh is of the ecologist, especially when natural calamities and catastrophes occur. It is no exaggeration that the incidence and dimensions of such horrific events including floods, hurricanes, and pandemics have unfortunately increased lately, Undoubtedly, such events impact the future of earth's biosphere. For such reasons, the need for trees and green spaces, etc. for sustainable ecological balance is more in urban areas. Our actions need to match with the desired well‐defined sustainable goals.

      It is gratifying to note that the editors of the book ‘Urban Ecology and Global Climate Change’ have chosen very well thought of five thematic sections focussing mainly on the interplay between cause and effect of urban pressure and climatic sustainability. These sections range from the perspective of (i) urban ecology and climate change, (ii) emerging technologies for designing urban landscape, (iii) urban biodiversity and natural resource exploitation, (iv) impact of fast urbanisation on the development sustainability, and (v) threat of climate change to ecological conservation. These themes have been very intelligently covered through 16 chapters. The choice of the editors for contributing authors of the 16 chapters is worth appreciation. It ranged from different parts of India besides scientists from Thailand, Czech Republic, Austria, Bangladesh, and Nepal.

In my opinion, the book will be very useful to the students and scientists not only in the field of environment and ecology but equally well for the town and country planning, policymakers, architects, managers of the river and coastal areas, and state and central government decision‐makers, that too, not only in India, but the world over.

      While congratulating the editors, authors, and the publishers for producing this title, I extend my best wishes for the success of the title which is very timely and relevant.

      R. K. Kohli PhD, FNA, FASc, FNASc, FNAAS, FBS, FNESA

      Vice Chancellor, Amity University Punjab, Mohali – 140306, India

      Professor, JC Bose National Fellow, Certified Senior Emeritus Ecologist, ESA, USA Former Vice chancellor, Central University of Punjab

      2021

      Foreword

       P. K. Joshi

      Global Climate Change largely impacts urban ecosystems and urban life. At the same time, the urban ecosystems are a key contributor to the global climate change. The recent reports on impacts of global climate change suggest that the impacts will be immense, enduring, and pernicious on entire human systems. Only scientific knowledge and actions at multiple scales can settle adaptation and mitigation to such impacts. However, to attempt this an interface between the urban ecosystems and the global climate change needs to be explored. The rate of urbanisation across the world has made it critical to keep urban ecosystems, their structural and functional components, and their dynamism central to the global environmental research and sustainability challenges. In fact, the science and policy communities have increasingly recognised this.

      Urban Ecology and Global Climate Change is timely and a very welcome addition to the pertinent literature to unwrap the obstacles to adaptation and mitigation measures and sustainable development. It connects the relatively less known feedbacks between urban ecology and global environment change. The former is an eponymous discipline promoting resilient and sustainable urban spaces where human and nature coexist. The latter refers specifically to the rise in global temperatures since the mid‐twentieth century to the present and its unprecedented impacts. Thus, by bridging these two important disciplines, the book fills an important niche which is no longer possible to support through a few research papers. The conditions are too complex in both the areas, urbanisation and climate change; thus, interlinkages need to be understood, documented, and reported for the wider audience. I am pleased to see that this volume is successful in achieving this.

In a way, the book examines the interacting forces of urbanisation and global climate change that are currently shaping the ecology of urban centres and the scope of future planning, design, and management strategies, while enhancing the environmental, social, and cultural values of these novel ecosystems. The book presents a wide range of contemporary aspects of urban ecology that are useful in ecological research, and that I hope others will find of benefit in design of research, or in reading and evaluating ongoing developments. I must congratulate the editors and authors to address intersections of queries of ecologist, environmentalist, geographers, urban planners, policymakers, and general public in this volume. It will serve as a wonderful guide to prompt these stakeholders to embrace the ecological concept of sustainability and understand the basics of urban ecology to deal with the questions of global climate change to create functional urban landscape in this challenging era.

      P. K. Joshi

      Professor – School of Environmental Sciences

      Chairperson – Special Centre for Disaster Research

      Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

      2021

Section 1 Urban Ecology and Global Climate Change: Introduction

1 Urban Ecology and Climate Change: Challenges and Mitigation Strategies

       Rishikesh Singh1,2, Pramit Verma1, Vipin Kumar Singh3, Pratap Srivastava4, and Arun Kumar5

       1 Institute of Environment & Sustainable Development (IESD), Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India

       2 Department of Botany, Faculty of Science, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India

       3 Department of Botany, Institute of Science, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India

       4 Department of Botany, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Post‐graduate College, University of Allahabad, Prayagraj, India