A walking friendly Mumbai is really the lowest of low hanging fruits in the goal to improve the quality of life in Mumbai. In the process of improving the walking environment what will also be impacted is the health of Mumbai, mobility and climate change mitigation targets.

While there is confusion over agreements at the COP proceedings a number of low hanging fruit go unaddressed and unsupported with resources. Walking is one of the most basic of needs, occurs on a daily basis and is important to improving the quality of life and health in cities.

The Walking Project would like to set a target of Mumbai becoming the most walking friendly city in India within a decade. The project is a group activity aimed at bringing everybody who is passionate about this goal to work together. It is being launched during the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio + 20) deliberations with Rio + 30 as a target date to achieve the goal.

A very large part of environmental debate has been disproportionately and obsessively allocated for climate change mitigation to the complete neglect of a number of issues which have strong reasons to be supported for reasons other than climate change mitigation alone. The resultant stress has only created ennui. Walking is clearly more of a here and now health issue than something we should worry about 50 years hence.

And if we are not able to create community and government collaboration to get something like this straight then there really is no need to be stressed about climate change - we should just accept whatever comes.