Mahmoud Bakr and Amira El-Noshokaty grieve over the massacre of trees As per the orders of the Arab Union for Youth and Environment, by the end of 2007 one million new trees will have been planted in each Arab country. The union's location is Egypt; and yet alongside the Marioutiya Canal, just outside Cairo proper, age-old giant camphor trees are being cut down to make room for a 5km extension connecting the 26 July Corridor with the Ring Road. Authorities had promised to transform the shores of the Marioutiya Canal -- one of the oldest on the Giza Plateau -- from rubbish dumps into gardens, but the present prospect affords little in the way of anything but rubbish; in its midst the trees lie dead, or else they are nowhere to be seen. Osman Khalafallah, the owner of a supermarket overlooking the canal, expressed his anger at what is happening: "Back in Upper Egypt, we plant trees, we don't kill them. What needs to be cut down is traffic, and the number of people -- not trees. It's good to remember that we live in a country where 96 per cent of the area is desert, and greenery is urgently needed." Hanging onto two as yet tiny trees he himself planted outside the supermarket, Khalafallah wonders why yet another concrete bridge is needed where, in its stead, a mosquito-infested body of water could be easily filled in and, together with its shores, transformed into a garden. And yet the government prioritises differently. While stressing the importance of planting trees -- a single tree, he explained, can offset the emissions of five motor vehicles -- Sayed Khalifa, forestation specialist at the Agriculture Ministry, says that, considering sheer numbers, cutting down camphor trees in Marioutiya makes sense once you realise that the bridge will benefit thousands of citizens. Environmentalists, for their part, are outraged. As Mohamed Abdel-Aziz Al-Guindi puts it, greenery plays an indispensable role in maintaining the ecological balance of the planet: "trees act as a filter for pollutants and cutting them down is a crime under penal as well as environment law. If there is a need to cut a tree, then measures should be taken to plant two or three in the same place." It was in this spirit that African activist and Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai launched a campaign to plant one billion trees worldwide to help fight climate change and poverty, now coordinated by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). Some 32 million acres of trees annually disappear, mostly from Africa and Latin America -- something ecologist Tony Simmons insists will have grave consequences for everyone on the planet. On the local level, however, considerations become somewhat more complicated. "Immediate and long-term needs have to be balanced against each other," according to Magdi Allam, expert on the Arab world environment. Even from the environmental point of view, easing a persistent bottle neck in traffic can be more pressing than protecting 22 old camphor trees: "some 12,000 vehicles emitting fumes pass through the area connecting the Lebanon and Rimaya squares -- anything to speed up their passage and thus reduce emissions will help the environment." He added that similar trees should be planted in the vicinity, noting that, unlike the Benegalese ficus in Agouza, for example, camphor is not a rare species of tree. But, however persuasive, such arguments do little to comfort the residents of Marioutiya. According to Randa Youssef, whose villa overlooks the canal, the disappearance of the trees was too sudden for comfort: "Aside from their ecological significance, those trees were our shelter against mosquitoes that swarm around the rubbish daily thrown into the lake -- because there are no rubbish collectors on the street. Why not shift the position of the bridge a few metres away to Al-Anfaq Street, parallel to the lake, where there are no trees," Youssef suggested. "The area I am describing already has tunnels and might be easier to connect to the Ring Road." But while residents like Youssef have nothing to offer but complaints, there are alarming reports about gas emissions in the country. According to Egypt's latest annual environment report, published last year, Egypt's carbon dioxide emissions have rose from 107 tonnes in 1990/91 to 154 tonnes in 2006/07, contributing 0.59 of the world total. This led to 15 environmental projects, including the plan to plant trees around the Ring Road, costing some $300 billion in total. Under achievements in Chapter 7 of the report some 500,000 trees were in the process of being planted, out of which some 65,000 were already growing, creating a 100km green belt along the Ring Road encircling all of Greater Cairo. Still, the government can seem to be planting trees with one hand and uprooting them with the other. Officials, supported by some academics, seem to see the traffic problem as more urgent: Al-Azhar University professor Sami Al-Ghayati, for example, says national development should not stop because of a small number of replaceable trees, recalling a similar case in Roxy in the 1980s: "green areas must be developed in other cites and individuals as well as civic organisations rallied behind that cause."
