Cairo’s vanishing trees in the spotlight

The removal of trees on Jameat El Dowal Al Arabiya Street in Mohandiseen, Cairo was last night’s talking point, as ongoing development works aim to reorganize traffic flow and improve efficiency on one of Cairo’s busiest streets. On Yahduth Fi Misr, Sherif Amer highlighted the widespread dissatisfaction with the tree removal alongside development projects across Egypt in recent years.

Amer pointed out that cutting down trees contradicts the 100 mn Tree Initiative launched by President Abdel Fattah El Sisi in 2022, questioning why innovative alternatives were not explored to avoid this outcome (watch, runtime: 05:25). “We are talking about a national project to plant 100 mn trees… If we already had trees, why were they cut down?” Amer said.

The incident triggered a fair bit of controversy over the past week, prompting a response from both the local development and environment ministries, which said that plans are in place to replace the removed trees with twice as many.

REMEMBER- We previously highlighted the tree-felling issue. Road expansion projects have led to the loss of some 911k sqm of Cairo’s green spaces in the three years leading up to 2020.