PARIS – For a long time, a favorite place for picnics and sunbathing, the lawns surrounding the Eiffel Tower have recently become the scene of furious protests. First came a campaign on social media. Then a concentration of dozens of residents. Shortly afterwards, a protester had crouched on a nearby banana to go on a hunger strike.
The source of your anger? A plan to cut down more than 20 trees, some more than 100 years old, around the tower as part of an effort to build a huge garden and alleviate tourist congestion.
The controversy is just the latest in a series that has surrounded Paris City Hall as it tries to green the city, a task that seems more urgent as scorching temperatures drop in the French capital and the rest of Europe.
Local authorities are redesigning Paris ’cityscape to make it more climate-friendly, but a growing number of residents say widespread tree felling around the capital is paradoxically undermining the city’s environmental ambitions.
Trees are considered one of the best defenses against radiation that contributes to heat waves rising everywhere due to global warming. They provide much-needed coolness in dense cities like Paris, where temperatures were at 90 on Monday afternoon and were expected to rise.
Trees are considered one of the best defenses against radiation that contributes to heat waves rising everywhere due to global warming. Credit … Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times
“Without the trees, the city is an unbearable bakery,” said Tangui Le Dantec, an urban planner and co-founder of Aux Arbres Citoyens, a group protesting the felling of trees in Paris.
In recent months, small protests have erupted around Paris, with residents and activists concentrated around the trees doomed by major urban development projects that have sometimes turned the capital into a giant work.
In April, they filmed the felling of 76 bananas, most of them decades old, at the Porte de Montreuil, on the northern outskirts of Paris. The City Council wants to turn the site into a huge square, part of a project by the mayor, Anne Hidalgo, to create “a green belt” around the capital.
“Ma’am. Hidalgo, please stop the massacre,” Thomas Brail, founder of the National Tree Surveillance Group, said as the machines cut down trees behind him, in a video he recorded in April. Later, Mr. Brail went on an 11-day hunger strike on the banana tree near the Eiffel Tower.
Mayor Anne Hidalgo in her offices at City Hall. Efforts to make Paris green seem more urgent as scorching temperatures drop in the French capital this summer. Credit … Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times
Yves Contassot, former deputy mayor of Paris in charge of the environment and member of the Green Party, said that cutting down trees has become “a very sensitive issue that causes a bit of scandal at a time when we are talking about fighting against global warming. in the big cities ”.
At first, the plan to redevelop the congested traffic area around the Eiffel Tower seemed environmentally sound to Paris residents. Most vehicles would be banned, and a network of pedestrian lanes, bike lanes and a park would be created.
“A new green lung,” the City Council boasted on its website.
But residents discovered in May that the plan also meant cutting down 22 well-established trees and threatening the root system of others, including a 200-year-old banana tree planted long before the Eiffel Tower was built in the late 1880s. .
“The poor tree was planted in 1814, and one morning some boys want to make room for luggage storage and sweep it away,” said Brail, the protester who went on a hunger strike in the tree, mocking plans to improve facilities. for visitors.
Thomas Brail, right, in a tree near the Eiffel Tower, protesting against a renovation project that will see several old trees cut down. Credit … Thomas Coex / Agence France-Presse – Getty Images
A series of protests, as well as an online petition that gathered more than 140,000 signatures, finally forced the City Council on May 2 to change its plans and pledge not to cut a single tree as part of the project. environmentalization.
Emmanuel Grégoire, deputy mayor of Paris in charge of town planning and architecture, said in an interview that the city realized it was “losing a symbolic battle for the project’s green ambitions.”
In 2007, Paris adopted a climate plan that helped reduce the city’s carbon footprint by 20 percent between 2004 and 2018 and nearly doubled renewable energy consumption, according to a recent report from regional authorities. Paris ’new goal is to become a carbon-neutral city powered only by renewable energy by 2050.
Mr. Le Dantec, an urban planner, acknowledged that “in relation to the reduction of pollution, there has certainly been an improvement”. He referred to the successful, though answered, plans of Mrs. Noble to limit car use in the capital.
But he added that Paris’ urban plans had neglected another reality of climate change: rising temperatures, against which trees are considered one of the best defenses.
The national weather service has estimated that temperatures on the so-called heat islands in Paris during recent heat waves were sometimes 40 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than in the surrounding areas. Credit … Christophe Archambault / Agence France-Presse – Getty Images
Trees cool cities by providing shade and mitigating the effects of so-called “urban heat islands”.
which predominate in Paris, by absorbing radiation. Météo France, the national weather service, has estimated that temperatures on these heat islands during recent heat waves were sometimes 40 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than in the surrounding areas.
In mid-June, while France was drowning in scorching temperatures, Mr. Le Dantec walked around Paris with a thermometer. In Republic Square, it recorded temperatures of up to 140 degrees Fahrenheit on concrete surfaces, compared to 82 degrees under a 100-year-old banana.
“Our best protection against heat waves are trees,” said Dominique Dupré-Henry, a former architect at the Ministry of the Environment and co-founder of Aux Arbres Citoyens.
But of the 30 major cities studied by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Paris has the lowest tree cover, at 9 percent, compared to 12.7 percent in London and 28.8 percent in Oslo.
“This is exactly the opposite of adapting to climate change,” Ms. Dupré-Henry.
Mr. Grégoire said Paris plans to plant 170,000 new trees by 2026. Taking the example of the Porte de Montreuil, the northern part of Paris, he said many more trees would be planted than they would be cut down.
Of the 30 major cities studied by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Paris has the lowest tree cover, at 9 percent, compared to 12.7 percent in London. Credit … Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times
“It’s a project with very high environmental standards,” Mr. Grégoire, highlighting the transformation of what is now a large asphalt roundabout into a green square. “The result is positive in terms of the fight against urban heat islands.”
Regional environmental authorities have less confidence. In their assessment of the project, they noted that the works and new infrastructure “will, on the contrary, lose more heat.”
Mr. Le Dantec also said that in the short term, young trees are less effective than older ones at mitigating global warming, because their foliage is smaller and cannot absorb as much radiation. “A 100-year-old tree is worth 125 newly planted trees” in terms of absorbing carbon dioxide and cooling its environment, he said.
At the Porte de Montreuil, residents had conflicting feelings about the project. Lo Richert Lebon, a 57-year-old designer, praised the “green efforts”, saying they would help improve the quality of life in this declining suburb.
But “the grass is not worth the trees,” he added, standing in the shade of the bananas that had been planned to be cut down, as part of the redesign of a flea market in the area. “Trees should be integrated into these efforts, rather than being an adjustment variable.”