The green oasis in the New York City could look completely different today. The NYC authorities considered development of parcels in that area. The green oasis concept has won, though. ”As today’s study shows, in a short time the city earned more than if it had sold the area for construction investments” - says Marzena Suchocka, PhD from the Warsaw University of Life Sciences.
Experts about tree protection during construction investments
trees
20 years after the Central Park came into being the areas around it unexpectedly acquired additional value. The investment brought even more profits than initially planned because the city earned more on taxes from nearby parcels and apartments. ”People prefer to live, do shopping and rent flats in greener places. It’s not true then that trees do not earn for themselves” - Suchocka, PhD sums up. Additionally, the value of urban greenery is hard to estimate. The Central Park has become a favourite place of meetings, rest and adaptation for New Yorkers.
The Polish trees, though, still lose with new investments. The number of trees in Poland is going down in the places where the number of investments is the largest. The Supreme Audit Office decided to check if the law enables real protection of trees while new roads, housing estates and shopping malls are built. Another question is: if it is the case can public institutions use that law properly?
The audit was preceded by an experts panel. Public officials, entrepreneurs, ecologists and academics debated in the NIK headquarters on how to avoid a conflict of interests between investors and trees protection activists.
Nobody knows how many trees there are in cities
Paweł Lisicki from the Environment Protection Bureau in Warsaw pointed out that there is no greenery inventories in the Polish cities. Warsaw, for instance, only has a plan of such inventory. Nobody knows how many trees grow in the agglomeration areas. And this makes their protection difficult. Krzysztof Worobiec from ”Sadyba” Association gave an example of Berlin where all trees are counted precisely. ”Each of them has its own number plaque and public files. ”At the same time, the municipality heads tend to forget that they also are responsible for environment protection” - says Worobiec.
No specialists in public institutions
Piotr Tyszko-Chmielowiec, PhD, Eng - originator and leader of the Programme ”Roads for Nature” - highlighted another problem. In his opinion persons responsible for trees protection in Poland are usually not properly prepared for that. Road management authorities and local governments abound in officials who simply lack essential knowledge. The ignorance about trees is one of the reasons why the forest stand in the cities or by the roads is gradually disappearing.
For Jan Łukaszkiewicz, PhD, Eng the tree devastation issue is related to the tender practice used in Poland. Tree service contracts are won by incompetent companies which offered the lowest price. They have neither good specialists nor appropriate equipment. As a consequence they destroy trees instead of caring about them.
Valueless trees
The factor that contributes to tree devastation may be the still-low awareness of what we lose by destroying them. ” In Poland trees are considered as something unimportant” - claims Piotr Tyszko-Chmielowiec. ”Street lamps are more important because it is for them that pavements or roads are moved. Nobody is going to do the same for trees, it’s much easier to cut them. The difference is that a lantern can be reproduced in no time but as for trees it will take exactly a hundred years to bring a one-hundred-year-old one into being” - argues the leader of the ”Roads for Nature” Programme. And he adds that trees are also part of infrastructure (green but still). Unfortunately Polish people still seem not to be aware of that.
Green certificates
Maybe something is changing, though. Administration bodies receive more and more complaints from city inhabitants who point out that on the occasion of construction investments nice and healthy trees are cut. More and more press releases are written on that subject.
Some investors are more aware of the issue now. Some developers are trying to get the so-called green certificates confirming that they protected the environment in the investment process. By the way, this is what translates into the way the new estates look and function afterwards. We need trees very much. Getting rid of them in the cities will affect all of us in different dimensions” - argues Marzena Suchocka, PhD.
It is mainly the case with children. Enclosed in concrete they put on weight, suffer from depression, fall ill. Doctors have already named a disease related to separation of human beings from nature. Maybe the time has come to seriously look at the issue of tree protection in the cities?
The audit of tree protection in investment processes is conducted by the NIK Branch in Cracow. The audit covers cities of over 15 thousand inhabitants in five provinces. The inspectors will take under the microscope the total of 10 city councils and 9 local governments at the county level. We will know the audit results after summer holiday.
