Tag Archives for tallest

India unveils the world’s tallest statue, celebrating development at the cost of the environment


Ruth Gamble, La Trobe University and Alexander E. Davis, La Trobe University

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi will today inaugurate the world’s largest statue, the Statue of Unity in Gujarat. At 182m tall (240m including the base), it is twice the height of the Statue of Liberty, and depicts India’s first deputy Prime Minister, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.

The statue overlooks the Sardar Sarovar Dam on the Narmada River. Patel is often thought of as the inspiration for the dam, which came to international attention when the World Bank withdraw its support from the project in 1993 after a decade of environmental and humanitarian protests. It wasn’t until 2013 that the World Bank funded another large dam project.

Like the dam, the statue has been condemned for its lack of environmental oversight, and its displacement of local Adivasi or indigenous people. The land on which the statue was built is an Adivasi sacred site that was taken forcibly from them.



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The Statue of Unity is part of a broader push by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to promote Patel as a symbol of Indian nationalism and free-market development. The statue’s website praises him for bringing the princely states into the Union of India and for being an early advocate of Indian free enterprise.

The BJP’s promotion of Patel also serves to overshadow the legacy of his boss, India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. Nehru’s descendants head India’s most influential opposition party, the Indian National Congress.

The statue was supposed to be built with both private and public money, but it attracted little private investment. In the end, the government of Gujarat paid for much of the statue’s US$416.67 million price tag.

The statue under construction, January 2018.
Alexander Davis

The Gujarat government claims its investment in the statue will promote tourism, and that tourism is “sustainable development”. The United Nations says that sustainable tourism increases environmental outcomes and promotes local cultures. But given the statue’s lack of environmental checks and its displacement of local populations, it is hard to see how this project fulfils these goals.

The structure itself is not exactly a model of sustainable design. Some 5,000 tonnes of iron, 75,000 cubic metres of concrete, 5,700 tonnes of steel, and 22,500 tonnes of bronze sheets were used in its construction.

Critics of the statue note that this emblem of Indian nationalism was built partly with Chinese labour and design, with the bronze sheeting subcontracted to a Chinese firm.

The statue’s position next to the controversial Sardar Sarovar Dam is also telling. While chief minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014, Modi pushed for the dam’s construction despite the World Bank’s condemnation. He praised the dam’s completion in 2017 as a monument to India’s progress.

Both the completion of the dam and the statue that celebrates it suggest that the BJP government is backing economic development over human rights and environmental protections.

The statue’s inauguration comes only a month after the country closed the first nature reserve in India since 1972. Modi’s government has also come under sustained criticism for a series of pro-industry policies that have eroded conservation, forest, coastal and air pollution protections, and weakened minority land rights.

India was recently ranked 177 out of 180 countries in the world for its environmental protection efforts.

Despite this record, the United Nations’ Environmental Programme (UNEP) recently awarded Modi its highest environmental award. It made him a Champion of the Earth for his work on solar energy development and plastic reduction.

The decision prompted a backlash in India, where many commentators are concerned by the BJP’s environmental record.



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Visitors to the statue will access it via a 5km boat ride. At the statue’s base, they can buy souvenirs and fast food, before taking a high-speed elevator to the observation deck.

The observation deck will be situated in Patel’s head. From it, tourists will look out over the Sardar Sarovar Dam, as the accompanying commentary praises “united” India’s national development successes.

But let’s not forget the environmental and minority protections that have been sacrificed to achieve these goals.

This article was amended on November 7, 2018, to clarify the role of Chinese companies in the statue’s design and construction.The Conversation

Ruth Gamble, David Myers Research Fellow, La Trobe University and Alexander E. Davis, New Generation Network Fellow, La Trobe University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Mountain ash has a regal presence: the tallest flowering plant in the world



File 20180601 69521 2pug9l.png?ixlib=rb 1.1

CSIRO via Wikipedia, CC BY-SA

Gregory Moore, University of Melbourne

Welcome to Beating Around the Bush, a series that profiles native plants: part gardening column, part dispatches from country, entirely Australian. Read more about the series here or get in touch to pitch a plant at batb@theconversation.edu.au.

The Indigenous people of Victoria and Tasmania have long known of the giant trees to be found in some of the wetter and cooler forests of these parts of Australia. The first Europeans were amazed to see trees of such stature growing in what they regarded as a dry and hostile environment.

The trees are straight and tall – almost incredibly tall – and many have massive girths. They are in every sense living giants.

Today we know the species by various common names, such as mountain ash, swamp gum, stringy gum or even giant gum, in different parts of Australia. Perhaps this is a situation where the proper botanical name, which many people find difficult and confusing, says it all. This monarch of eucalypts is officially called Eucalyptus regnans; regnans being Latin for ruling or reigning. Its massive stature gave rise to the name.

How does it grow?

Mountain ash lack many of the typical eucalypt adaptations to environmental stresses like fire, drought and poor soils. They compensate by growing very fast under the right conditions; eventually over-topping all the other species present.

They have huge and often deep root systems to supply adequate amounts of water. To grow successfully they need plenty of water and sunlight – so they are not really very hardy – but in the right environment they are unbeatable.

They always grow tall and so are not for your smaller suburban backyard, but there are many in backyards in the Dandenongs, in peri-urban sites to the east of Melbourne and in towns in Gippsland and the Otways.

Their mature leaves are about 3mm wide and can be as long as 150mm, while their flowers are white to cream in colour and 8mm across. The buds and flowers grow in clusters, but like the flowers of many eucalypts they often go unnoticed, especially on the taller trees. The fruits or gumnuts are again in clusters, about 10mm across and, somewhat surprisingly for such a large tree, contain hundreds of tiny seeds.

The bark is rough and fibrous at the base and for up to about 10m from the ground, but then is a beautiful smooth, mottled cream and grey with long ribbons of dead bark hanging from the canopy. These ribbons burn in bushfires and can carry fire for many kilometres ahead of a fire.



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A forest giant

We will never know if a Eucalyptus regnans was the tallest living thing on Earth; they are certainly the largest flowering plants in the world. Many of the biggest were felled in the mid to late 1800s before they could be properly measured.

There have been, and continue to be, a number of rivals for the tallest mountain ash; of course there have been the usual rivalries between states. Tasmania currently holds the record, but there are several tall specimens in Victoria that may take the crown in future.

Some of these trees were so large that the stumps could neither be transported from the forest, nor processed in the timber mills of the day. These huge logs can still be seen rotting on the forest floor more than a century later.

A stump of a Eucalyptus regnans in Tasmania’s Styx valley.
TTaylor/Wikipedia, CC BY-SA

These trees were so large, an old forester told me in the early 1970s, that when they felled them by hand with cross-cut saws, air could be heard being sucked into the cuts – the so-called sighing of the trees as they died.

We do know, however, that specimens of Eucalyptus regnans regularly exceed 85 metres in height and that one tree was measured at 132m tall. Often they were measured after they had been felled and the uppermost branches (and sometimes the stump) were not included in the measurement. Today the tallest specimens are just under 100m tall and the biggest tree is 10.74m in diameter and 33.75m in girth (measured at 1.4m above the ground).

They are second only to the coast redwood, Sequoia sempervirens, in height.

For such mighty trees, it often comes as a surprise that they are not as old as many people think. While the coast redwoods can exceed 2,000 years of age, mature Eucalyptus regnans tree are commonly about 300 years old, but may reach about twice that age if they are growing in the right place to miss bushfires.



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Vulnerable to fire

Mountain ash are easily killed by bushfires. Although they grow in the cooler and wetter parts of southeastern Australia where fires are not so frequent, as time passes, a fire becomes inevitable. The fire kills the individual specimens, but at the same time rejuvenates and renews the forest. The mighty Eucalyptus regnans regenerates from the tiniest of seeds that are shed from the woody fruits that were present in the canopy at the time of the fire; seedlings often emerge about six months after a fire.

When fires burn through Eucalyptus regnans-dominated wet forests most of the trees die, but those that don’t can be fire-scarred – often on one side. Over time these trees decay and then hollow out. Given their massive girths, they can develop huge cavities at the base and a hollow trunk leading upwards like chimney.

As with other similar large-girthed eucalypts, Indigenous people used these trees as shelters. They weren’t the only ones: there are records of early settlers and timber cutters using these trees as their homes for families of seven or more people.

Hollowed-out mountain ash were used as shelters by settler families.
State Library of Victoria

The timber from Eucalyptus regnans reminded some people of European ash timber and hence the name mountain ash, while others thought it had properties as good as oak and so the name Tasmanian or Tassie oak was used for the timber. The timber is still highly valued today and Eucalyptus regnans is a common plantation species in Australia and overseas.

The ConversationIn Victoria and Tasmania, Eucalyptus regnans forests are to be found within an hour’s drive of major cities, but in Melbourne, you can catch a glimpse of these magnificent trees and the forest over which they reign by visiting the atrium of the Melbourne Museum.

Gregory Moore, Doctor of Botany, University of Melbourne

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Australia: The Grandis – Australia’s Tallest Tree


The link below is to an article on Australia’s tallest tree which is found in the Myall Lakes National Park.

For more visit:
http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/journal/highway-one-the-grandis-tree.htm

The World’s Tallest Tree


The following link is to an article concerning the world’s tallest tree and includes a photo of the previous record holder which is very impressive.

For more visit:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/04/08/135206497/the-worlds-tallest-tree-is-hiding-somewhere-in-california?

TASMANIA: TALLEST HARDWOOD TREE IN THE WORLD DISCOVERED


A swamp gum discovered in Tasmania is now the world’s tallest know hardwood tree. The Eucalyptus regnans known as ‘Centurion,’ stands at 101 metres tall and is the only know hardwood tree over 100 metres in the world. It is also the tallest tree in Australia. The Eucalypt measures some 405cm in diameter. The Centurion was discovered near the Tahune Airwalk 80km south-west of Hobart.

The previous record holder for hardwood trees was a tree known as ‘Icarus Dream,’ found in Tasmania’s Styx Valley some 100km north-west of Hobart. The Icarus dream is also a Swamp Gum and stands at 97 metres tall.

The tallest trees in the world are Californian Redwoods which are softwood trees.