Cairo’s axe to grind: Can fresh saplings ever replace century-old trees?
Municipal work crews in Mohandeseen felled decades-old trees along Gameat El-Dowal El-Arabiya Street and Mostafa Mahmoud Square this past week to widen traffic lanes, igniting fierce public, parliamentary, and environmental backlash across Cairo and Giza.
The logging operations run directly counter to the state’s flagship “100 Million Trees” initiative. Launched in November 2022 as a seven-year national campaign, the program targets planting 100 million trees across 9,900 sites covering roughly 6,600 feddans by the 2028/29 fiscal year to double per-capita green space, improve air quality, and curb emissions.
Yet on the asphalt of Mohandeseen, chainsaws reduced mature canopies to bare stumps, prompting citizens on social media to circulate photographs of bulldozed medians alongside reports of similar clearings across several governorates. Outraged residents questioned why municipal authorities razed historic trees instead of relocating them.
The controversy unfolds against an alarming retreat in Greater Cairo’s green cover. According to an empirical land-use study, the capital’s green spaces contracted from 11.2% in 2001 to 8.5% in 2021: a net decline of approximately 24% that wiped out 32 square kilometers of vegetation.
These losses demonstrate why gross planting counts cannot be evaluated in isolation: tallying new saplings creates an illusion of progress if existing urban canopies vanish at the same time.
Pledges vs. pavement
The Ministry of Environment and Local Development defended the roadworks along Gameat El-Dowal and Mostafa Mahmoud Square, maintaining that additional lanes were indispensable to absorb surging traffic generated by surrounding arterial expansions—including the Kamal Amer Axis, the upgraded July 26 Axis, and the May 15 Bridge.
Faced with mounting public anger, environment and local development minister Manal Awad ordered officials to inventory every felled tree in the corridor and determine why crews failed to transplant them.
Awad pledged to compensate for the loss by planting double the number of removed trees, promising species suited to the urban surroundings and ongoing road adjustments.
The environment ministry reiterated that its afforestation programs do not merely pursue raw numbers, but select drought- and soil-tolerant species tailored to each local climate to secure maximum ecological returns.
The executive branch moved swiftly to contain the fallout. On Saturday, President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi directed the government to adopt a comprehensive “Greening Cairo” project, mandating that any cleared site be converted into public parks and green spaces as part of heritage conservation efforts surrounding the capital’s historic landmarks.
Following up on El-Sisi’s orders on Monday, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly convened a Cabinet meeting to coordinate execution. Madbouly instructed Awad to enlist specialist consultants and launch immediate afforestation along the Ring Road and major thoroughfares.
He also ordered an inventory of all vacant state-owned land to transform plots into public parks and green spaces, offering managing state entities compensatory parcels in newly developed desert cities.
Yet as the government commits to expanding total green space, the removals raise an enduring ecological dilemma: Can fresh saplings ever truly replace canopies that took decades to grow?
The merit of urban shade
Dr. Nader Nour El-Din, professor of water resources at Cairo University’s Faculty of Agriculture, warned that clearing trees from Gameat El-Dowal, Dokki, and Mohandeseen wipes out ecological capital that saplings cannot offset. He pointed out that trees felled recently across Cairo and Giza had stood for 70 years, with others exceeding 150 years in age.
“Large trees cast vast canopies of shade and reduce local ambient temperatures by 4 to 8 degrees Celsius,” Nour El-Din told Al Manassa. “Preserving them is an absolute necessity, especially given the blistering summer heat.”
Young saplings require decades to attain comparable shade-giving canopies, Nour El-Din noted. Throughout their formative growth, they consume substantial water, fertilizer, and maintenance; older trees, by contrast, possess deep, mature root networks that draw groundwater independently.
Size does not rule out preservation, Nour El-Din added. Modern arboricultural machinery enables crews to uproot large trees with their root balls and surrounding soil intact, allowing contractors either to transplant them permanently elsewhere or store them temporarily until construction ends.
While transplant feasibility depends on species, size, and health, Nour El-Din insisted that technical assessments must precede any felling decision rather than treating young saplings as an automatic remedy.
Nour El-Din criticized what he characterized as “gross neglect” toward Egypt’s urban greenery. “It is as if there is enmity between us and the color green,” he said, urging the state to protect standing canopies and expand afforestation, especially as neighboring desert nations invest heavily in urban green belts.
He also urged expanding the Ministry of Environment’s statutory powers to mandate binding Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) prior to construction. “Environmental protection must form an organic part of the planning phase for transport, agricultural, and industrial works—not an afterthought once the damage is done.”
A legal vacuum under the canopy
Ahmed El-Seidi, lawyer and chairman of the board of trustees at the Egyptian Foundation for Environmental Rights (EFER), argued that mass planting alone cannot resolve the ongoing destruction of established trees.
“Article 45 of the Constitution explicitly obligates the state to safeguard and develop urban green spaces,” El-Seidi told Al Manassa. “Yet reality reflects no genuine protection for our living trees and green areas.”
Reacting to El-Sisi’s greening directive, El-Seidi observed: “The directive contained no protection mechanisms, and it remains completely silent on the mass razing taking place on our streets on a daily basis.” Safeguarding existing canopies, he insisted, must serve as the foundation of any greening policy.
“The solution does not lie in simply planting trees and calling it a day,” Seidi said, stressing that the priority must be halting the removal of mature trees wherever possible rather than felling them and scrambling for compensatory schemes.
Addressing Minister Awad’s pledge to double replantings along Gameat El-Dowal, El-Seidi remained skeptical: “Since 2016 we have been doing this: ‘Whatever is cut down, we will plant in its place.’ Recycling this policy does not cure the root of the problem.” An established tree represents years of accumulated natural capital, he noted; a sapling cannot restore that ecological value immediately.
El-Seidi traced the crisis to Egypt’s fragmented legal framework, citing multiple competing authorities, overlapping jurisdictions, and a “legal gap” governing tree felling, relocation, and mitigation.
“We need a tree protection law,” El-Seidi said, arguing that current statutes are scattered, outdated, and incapable of protecting urban canopies. He noted that he had hoped the presidential decree would urge the House of Representatives to draft clear legislation establishing legal custody over municipal trees, setting stringent hurdles for removal, and designating the exact authority empowered to grant felling permits.
While the Egyptian Penal Code criminalizes cutting or damaging trees and crops in specific circumstances, and Article 45 of the Constitution mandates the conservation of plant wealth and urban greenery, El-Seidi maintained that these provisions remain inadequate.
They fail to regulate the administrative removal decision itself, omit requirements to evaluate alternatives prior to cutting, and disperse accountability across conflicting state bodies.