Gurgaon Headlines Today – The biggest updates you need to know. Gurgaon: Citizens campaigning to protect the Aravalli hills on Sunday urged the Center to grant it UNESCO biosphere reserve status “to ensure long-term protection”.

Aravali Bachao Citizens Movement (ABCM) also called for a comprehensive plan to restore the entire 76,000 sq km landscape, rather than the fragmented “definition-based” approach associated with mining. Biosphere reserve status would mean marking the entire range as a learning space for sustainable practices within the world network of biosphere reserves. (WNBR).

These demands were reiterated at the ‘Sunday Meeting’ organized by ABCM behind Suncity in the forest area in Gurgaon, where parents, senior citizens, students and environment volunteers from across NCR gathered to read poetry, discuss and role play on the policy and court decisions. “It is very important to recognize the power of community-based action,” said Akshay Khurana, who works on zero-waste initiatives.

This area should be declared a protected UNESCO biosphere, he said. One of the major appeals in the program read, “Our ecosystems cannot be defined.

” The participants collectively read out a charter of demands, which included a complete halt to mining in the Aravalli biosphere by January 26, a moratorium on all construction activities until the air quality AQI improves to 50, strict emission norms for coal-fired power plants, a ban on waste-to-energy plants, free public transport to reduce private vehicle usage and significantly higher taxes on private transport to fund public transport. Mobility.

Participants also discussed the Supreme Court’s December 29 order, which had kept in abeyance its earlier November 20 direction, accepting the Union Environment Ministry panel’s recommendation to classify landforms at least 100 meters above the local relief along with their slopes and adjacent lands as Aravalli Hills.