The Andaman & Nicobar (A&N) Islands, more than 1000 kilometres east from the Indian mainland,  can be astonishingly beautiful. Swimming at sunset on Radhanagar Beach on Havelock Island, when the clear sea develops a silvery sheen and the parakeets and mynah birds screech from the high forest canopy of towering Mahua trees behind the white-sand beach, I felt that I had never been anywhere that more resembled paradise. But tourism is one of the many things that is putting increasing pressure on these beautiful islands, pressure not only on the spectacular but fragile ecology of the region from pollution, logging and over-fishing, but also on the few surviving indigenous tribal populations that have lived there for tens of thousands of years.

After the tsunami of boxing day 2004 I heard from a number of different sources the story of how in the A&N Islands many settlers from the Indian mainland, who are mainly Bengali, had been killed by the waves whereas the indigenous tribes had escaped almost completely without casualty. There were two theories put forward as to why this happened. The first is that through oral storytelling, the memory of previous tsunamis had been retained in the collective consciousness of tribal people, who anticipated what was about to happen when they saw the tide recede far further than usual. The other version states that the tribespeople observed animals running from the sea and they decided to follow them. There were other reports of animals fleeing prior to the impact of the tsunami, such as at Yala National Park in Sri Lanka, where many tourists who were on safari died but the loss of animal life was minimal.

Though the various tribal people of the A&N Islands, such as the Onge, the Jarawa and the Sentinelese, may have demonstrated their resilience to natural disaster, they are not so immune from threats from other human beings. The recent history of these indigenous populations is one of persecution from outsiders, from the British in the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries, who plundered the forests and tortured political prisoners from the Indian mainland there, to the Japanese occupation in the Second World War, and finally the determination of the Indian government to bring all its territories under centralised control and introduce more and more settlers from the mainland.

The population of the Onge tribe on Little Andaman was recently decimated after a number of men were poisoned when they drank from bottles that had been washed up on the shore.

The Jarawa tribe, who live mainly on South Andaman island, had a road built through their land and loggers and poachers are destorying the forest that they have lived in for thousands of years. The Indian Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that this road should be closed but it remains open. Indeed, I travelled down that road in a bus when I was there and saw the Jarawas begging by the roadside while Indian tourists jeered and took their photographs. It was a bizarre and unnerving spectacle and of course I was part of the problem just by being there.

The Sentinelese, meanwhile, who live on the isolated North Sentinel Island have actively resisted all attempts at contact and in 2006 killed with bows and arrows two fishermen who were illegally fishing in their water surrounding the island.

The charity Survival International is campaigning for the rights of these tribal groups in the A&N Islands and across the world. The fact that they survived the worst natural disaster for a century alone indicates to me that modern societies may have far more to learn from them than they do from modern Indian or European society. And that does rather question whether modern civilizations are gaining more and more knowledge and becoming increasingly enlightened as is the common assumption, or whether they are, in fact, becoming collectively more and more stupid.

I am, of course, talking about Charlie, who seems to have a knack for dividing opinion. Take his latest speech, for example: the 2009 Richard Dimbleby lecture, in which he reasserted his already well-known credentials as the royal poster-boy of environmentalism and everyone’s favourite posh greenie. Last year he came out top of a Country Life survey to find out who people saw as the ‘guardian of the countryside’ and Time magazine has called him ‘one of the world’s leading conservationsists’. Many people with an environmental agenda themselves evidently think that he is well-intentioned and also that his position outside of parliamentary politics and interest groups gives him a refreshingly non-partisan voice.

In his speech he stressed the need to ‘maintain balance between keeping the earth’s natural capital intact and sustaining humanity on its renewable income’.

‘We are not separate from nature’, he argued, ‘like everything else, we are nature.’

This is the kind of sentiment which wins Charlie praise from environmentalists. But his attitude to architecture in particular as represented in this speech is revealing, and relates to his recent clashes with one of the more prominent members of the architectural establishment.

He said, for example, that ‘I have talked long and hard about this for what seems rather a long time – but it is yet another case where a rediscovery of so-called “old-fashioned”, traditional virtues can lead to the development of sustainable urbanism.”

It’s the ‘old-fashioned’ part of this which  is most interesting. There’s no doubt that there is a lot to learn from the building methods and ways of life of the past. But I contend that Charles is interested in sustainability mainly in the sense of sustaining his own interpretation of what England is: a green and pleasant land of noble princes and toiling peasants, a land of village cricket greens and housing styles named after royals of the past few centuries: Tudor, Queen Anne, Georgian and Victorian. This sense of continuity, after all, supports his own standing as a member of the monarchy. And Charles was even keen to praise King Henry VIII as an environmentalist in his speech just to make plain to any of the less enlightened plebians that may have been listening that the royal family have a long and noble tradition of caring for nature.

The bizarre historical pastiche of styles at Charles’s pet project of Poundbury is what he would like to see in new housing developments across the country. Yet it is clear that modern, experimental technology and methods as well as far more ancient, vernacular building techniques can both play a significant role in creating better homes for people and the natural environment in the twenty-first century.

The Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment has been working on an interesting Passivhaus-based design at the Building Research Establishment (BRE) recently which suggests that even Charlie can see that there is a requirement for innovation. Yet the overall aesthetic impetus behind his thinking on architecture - a kind of fudged, nostalgic, conservative classicism - is surely an impediment to change towards better housing rather than a catalyst.

And if you’re not part of the solution, as the saying goes, you’re part of the problem.

What is your idea of the cities of the future? Utopian or dystopian? Full of happy people, singing birds and flowering trees or possibly as completely human-less deserts of degrading concrete.  It’s tempting to think of London in particular in terms of imagined dystopias such as those in the fairly recent films of 28 Days Later (2002) and Children of Men (2006). The cities of the present can be grim places too, though. Full of fumes and devoted to worship of the car. ‘Nothing but beats and grey concrete’. I’ve already begun to make plans to leave for a rural idyll.

But perhaps I’m giving up on the city too soon. How about working to try and diminish the impact of cars on cities, reduce the carbon emissions from buildings in cities, create more green space, wildlife corridors and urban forests? After all, the exodus from countryside to city is ongoing and cities are going to continue to be where most people in the world continue to live.

This is what really made me think about this: the idea of greener cities and investment in green infrastructure was the subject of a fascinating conference called Park City on March 24 and 25. It was organised by the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) and Natural England and it focused on turning cities into greener places. I was there to interview Wade Crowfoot, the director for climate protection initiatives for San Francisco, a city which appears to be making remarkable progress in reducing carbon emissions from buildings and transportation, and coming up with some ingenious and original schemes to help them achieve this. For example, the city authority organises a free collection of their waste oil and grease from restaurants in the city and recycles it to create biodiesel, which in turn powers the municipal bus fleet.

Another innovative idea is a web-tool which has been developed between the city government and a solar installation company. It uses Google Earth to measure the roof space of people’s homes and calculates how much a solar system would cost and how much it would save people in terms of their energy bills. This is backed up with clever tax rebates and subsidies to encourage people to make a positive choice.

Klaus Bondham, the mayor of environmental administration in Copenhagen, said that changes they have made to road junctions in the city to make them more friendly to cyclists and pedestrians had resulted in 50 per cent fewer traffic deaths at those junctions. It shows that green infrastructure is not just the fluffy dreams of environmentalists: investment can create all kinds of value for communities. Copenhagen’s ambition is to be the world’s first completely carbon neutral city by 2025. But that’s a long way off and in the mean time most scientists seem to agree that the consequences of climate change will exert a more and more powerful effect on the cities of the world. So adaptation to the changing climate is also important. Keeping cities cool. Protecting them from rising waters and torrential rain.

OK. So San Francisco and Copenhagen, two of the most notoriously liberal cities in the world are getting their act together. Big surprise. But what about the really filthy centres of money and capitalist greed? Like London, for example. Or New York. Well, there was an inspirational figure from New York at the conference called Majora Carter, who you can watch give a talk here.

And in London there does seem to be a major shift in attitudes. One speaker suggested that CABE simply would not have organised a conference like this just a couple of years ago. And Peter Bishop, group director for design, development and the environment at the London Development Agency (LDA) implied that instead of spending 28 million pounds pounds a mile widening the M1 (grey infrastructure), the government should invest that money in green infrastructure instead.

There are far too many issues which came out of this conference to condense into this one post. But on a personal level it has made me reconsider whether cities are indeed the doomed sepulchres which modern cinema is so fond of portraying. With vision and investment, and the energy and determination of people like Majora Carter, Wade Crowfoot and Klaus Bondham, perhaps a brighter urban future really is possible.

I love trees. There: I said it. I was thinking this yesterday as I walked through Regent’s Park. I’d been at Lord’s cricket ground in the morning and was having lunch at the Royal College of Physicians. The walk between them is a long stroll through one of the best open spaces in London. What an utterly English day. Apart, that is, from the fact that it was bright. And the flood of sunshine illuminated hundreds of golden-leaved trees as I walked; the cold, blasting wind sending leaves swirling past me in a mesmerising dance.

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