Paris-The lawn surrounding the Eiffel Tower, a long-loved place for picnics and sunbathing, has recently become a fierce protest.Came first Social media campaign.. next, Lahry According to dozens of locals.Eventually, the protesters Crouched At a nearby plane tree for a hunger strike.
What is the source of their anger? As part of an effort to build a vast garden and reduce the crowds of tourists, the plan is to cut down more than 20 trees around the tower that are over 100 years old.
This controversy is the latest in a series that was involved when the Paris City Hall was trying to green the city, and it became more and more urgent as the scorching temperature affected the French capital and other parts of Europe. It’s a visible issue.
Trees are considered to be some of the best protection against radiation that contributes to rising heat waves everywhere due to global warming. They provide the coveted coolness in a dense city like Paris, where temperatures were high in the 90’s and expected to be even higher on Monday afternoon.
“Without trees, the city is an intolerable furnace,” said Tangui Le Dantec, a city planner and co-founder of Aux Arbres Citoyens, a group protesting the logging of trees in Paris.
In recent months, small protests have taken place across Paris, gathering residents and activists around the trees blamed for the vast urban development project that turned the capital into a huge construction site.
In april, they photograph In Porto de Montreuil, a suburb of northern Paris, 76 plane trees, mostly decades ago, were logged. The city hall wants to turn this place into a huge square. This is part of a project by Mayor Anne Hidalgo, “GreenbeltAround the capital.
“MS. Hidalgo stop the slaughter,” said Thomas Braille, founder of the National Group for Tree Surveillance, when the machine chopped the tree behind him. video He shot in April. Mr. Breer later went on an 11-day hunger strike at Platanus near the Eiffel Tower.
Former deputy mayor of Paris and member of the Green Party, Yves Contasotto, said logging “is a very delicate question that causes a bit of a scandal when talking about the fight against global warming.” Said. In a big city. “
Initially, plans to redevelop the congested area around the Eiffel Tower seemed to be environmentally sound for the inhabitants of Paris. Most vehicles will be banned and a network of pedestrian roads, bike lanes and parks will be created.
The city hall boasted “new green lungs” Website..
However, in May, residents felled 22 well-established trees under the plan, and several others, including a 200-year-old airplane tree planted long before the Eiffel Tower was built in the late 1880s. I discovered that it meant threatening the root system.
“The poor tree was planted in 1814, and one morning some people wanted to make a room for luggage storage and it was washed away,” mocking plans to improve the facility. Mr. Breer, a protester who went on a hunger strike on a tree, said. For visitors.
A series of protests, and Online petition It collected over 140,000 signatures and eventually had the city council change plans on May 2, promising not to cut down a single tree as part of a greening project.
In an interview, Deputy Mayor Emmanuel Gregoire, who is in charge of city planning and architecture in Paris, said the city “has lost the iconic battle for the project’s green ambitions.”
In 2007, Paris adopted a climate plan to reduce urban carbon dioxide emissions by 20% and almost double renewable energy consumption between 2004 and 2018. Recent reports According to local authorities. Paris’ new goal is to become a carbon-neutral city powered solely by renewable energy by 2050.
“There is definitely an improvement in reducing pollution,” admitted urban planner Le Dantec. He said Mr. Hidalgo’s success was a dispute, but a plan to limit the use of cars in the capital.
But he added that Paris’ city planning ignored another reality of climate change. It is a rise in temperature, whereas trees are considered some of the best defenses.
The trees create shade and absorb radiation to cool the city by mitigating the effects of the so-called “heat island” that is prevalent in Paris.National Weather Service Météo France Estimated The temperature of those heat islands during recent heat waves could be 40 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the surrounding area.
In mid-June, Le Dantec wandered around Paris with a thermometer as France was suffocated by the scorching temperatures.At Place de la République, he record It is 82 degrees Celsius under a 100-year-old flat tree, while it is up to 140 degrees Fahrenheit on a concrete surface.
“Our best protection against heat waves is wood,” said Dominique Dupré-Henry, a former architect of the Ministry of the Environment and co-founder of Aux Arbres Citoyens.
But of the 30 metropolises studied by Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyThe lowest tree coverage in Paris is about 9%, compared to 12.7% in London and 28.8% in Oslo.
“This is the exact opposite of adapting to climate change,” said Dupre Henry.
Gregoire said Paris plans to plant 170,000 new trees by 2026. Taking Porto de Montreuil, a region in northern Paris, as an example, he said he would plant far more trees than logging.
“This is a project with very high environmental standards,” said Gregoire, emphasizing that the now huge asphalt roundabout will be transformed into a green square. “The result is positive in terms of fighting the city’s heat island.”
Local environmental authorities are not very confident.Among them evaluation In the project, they said that construction work and new infrastructure “conversely add more heat.”
Le Dantec also said that in the short term, young trees are less effective at mitigating global warming than older trees because of their small leaves and the inability to absorb much radiation. “A 100-year-old tree is equivalent to 125 new trees in that it absorbs carbon dioxide and cools the surroundings,” he said.
At Porte de Montreuil, the inhabitants had different feelings about this project. 57-year-old designer Lo Richert Lebon praised the “green effort” and said it would help improve the quality of life in this long-declining suburb.
However, as part of the redesign of the flea market in the area, she added, “the lawn is not worth the trees,” she added, standing in the shade of the Platanas, which is scheduled to be logged. “Trees should be integrated into these efforts, not adjustment variables.”