The deadline set by the Egyptian Endowments Authority for receiving studies from real estate development companies to exploit Rod El-Farag Park, which covers an area of 41,000 square metres, under a partnership arrangement with the authority, expired on 31 August.
The announcement the authority published on 6 August describes the site as “Rod El-Farag Park (the site of the old Rod El-Farag Market)”, and calls for “the optimal exploitation of the entire surface area of the land” through “a distinguished investment complex”, and press reports state that the potential uses include hotels, office buildings and towers. A month before the announcement, the constituency’s MP, Mohamed Abdel Rahman Rady, had been urging the authority in parliament to invest the land, which had “turned into a forest of trees”, then after the announcement he came back to ask about the legality of the offering. In what Zawia3 has reviewed of the authority’s announcement and its published statements, there is no mention of the fate of the two pitches and the existing trees in the park, nor of whether any green space will remain.
The land on offer was the site of the Rod El-Farag wholesale trade market, before service facilities were built on it, including a medical centre, an intellectual school, a hospital and the Rod El-Farag Culture Palace, and part of it was turned into a public park opened in 2018 by Major General Mohamed Sultan, then head of the Specialised Gardens Project in Cairo Governorate, on an area of ten feddans that includes two football pitches. Then the Endowments Authority recovered the land in 2021 under a ruling issued by the State Council.
On 8 July 2026, the Religious Affairs and Endowments Committee of the House of Representatives discussed a briefing request submitted by Rady, secretary of the Defence and National Security Committee and MP for the Rod El-Farag and Bulaq Abu El-Ela constituencies, about the market land. Rady said that the authority had received 42,000 square metres from Cairo Governorate about four years earlier to exploit, and had not invested them, so they turned into a “forest of trees”, and that “the Endowments does not make good use of its assets, and the Rod El-Farag Market land is the best proof”. He added that the endowment’s custodian, who is the Minister of Endowments, does not follow it up, and that the ministry’s share of the endowment’s revenue is 75%, and he requested a statement of how this share was spent in the past fiscal year. He spoke of “administrative confusion” between the ministry, in its capacity as the endowment’s custodian, and the authority, in its capacity as the investment body, and relayed demands from MPs on the committee to review the mechanisms for managing endowment funds.
Four weeks after that session, the authority announced that it was opening applications for major real estate development companies “to offer a distinguished investment complex under a strategic partnership arrangement, for the optimal exploitation of the entire surface area of the land”, and asked the companies for an integrated study including the development vision for the site, the master plan, the optimal division of the area and “the investment feasibility of the maximum exploitation of the land”, to be submitted by a deadline of 31 August 2026 at the authority’s head office at 109 Tahrir Street in Dokki.
The offering comes within a plan under which the Endowments intends to offer around 20 investment opportunities in the second half of 2026, among them plots of land and buildings that can be repurposed, according to Enterprise. The financial portfolio of the Ministry of Endowments is estimated at about EGP 1.04 trillion (about USD 21.5 billion), of which agricultural land accounts for about EGP 759 billion (about USD 15.7 billion), real estate assets for about EGP 137 billion (about USD 2.8 billion), and vacant land for more than EGP 141 billion (about USD 2.9 billion).
The MP: The Building Ratio Is Only 5%
On 19 August, Rady addressed a question to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Counsellor Hisham Badawi, directed to the Prime Minister, the Minister of Local Development and Environment and the Minister of Endowments, regarding the announcement published on 6 August, and said that “on examining the announcement, the illegality of this offering became clear” for four reasons.
The announcement, according to the question, did not specify the law that will be applied to the contract: the authority’s internal regulations or Law No. 182 of 2018 regulating contracts concluded by public entities, especially after the Cabinet approved standard contract templates for state bodies and authorities. Second, it was not clear whether the offering had been presented to the authority’s board of directors, the investment committee and the committee formed to preserve endowment funds, nor whether the aim was to develop the park and raise its efficiency or to change its use. Third, it was not clear whether the authority had obtained the licences and approvals of the Ministry of Environment and Cairo Governorate, whether to develop the park or to establish a real estate investment that exceeds the building ratio set in the site’s master plan, which is 5% of the total area. And fourth, the authority did not clarify its vision for the fate of the service projects already standing on part of the land: a hospital, a culture palace, a telephone exchange, a school complex and a youth centre.
The 5% ratio means that the dispute, if the plan is adhered to, will not be over the existence of the park but over what is built on about 2,000 square metres of its land and over the use of the rest; if, however, the offering exceeds it, that is what the MP is asking about.
According to data from the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS), an Egyptian’s share of green space is about 1.2 square metres, according to what Amr Rabie, head of the Timber Trees Department at the Horticulture Research Institute, said in September 2026, compared with a minimum of 9 square metres whose recommendation is attributed to the World Health Organization. In Cairo specifically, a study published in 2022 entitled “The Quantity and Distribution of Public Green Spaces in Cairo” found that the city lost about 910,000 square metres of its greenery between 2017 and 2020, so that the per capita share there fell from 0.87 to 0.74 square metres, and that more than half of its residents live in areas where their share is less than half a metre; it is the study that Reuters cited in August 2024. Other reports, among them a study by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) in 2022 and data that Zawia3 previously cited from the agency up to 2020, circulate a much lower figure of 17 square centimetres per person. The Human and City Foundation for Humanitarian and Social Research estimates Egypt’s need at about 58 million square metres of parks, while only about 5.4 million square metres are available, according to the agency’s data. By these measures, Rod El-Farag Park alone, with its ten feddans, is equivalent to the share of about 35,000 people at the Cairo rate, by Zawia3’s calculation.
On a broader scale, data from the global forest monitor (Global Forest Watch) show that Egypt lost about 1,800 hectares (18 square kilometres) of its tree cover between 2001 and 2024, or 1% of its area in 2000, resulting in the emission of about 560,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, bearing in mind that the monitor measures tree cover of all types, including trees on farmland, not urban parks alone. The Egyptian organisation ESLA attributes 33% of these losses to urban development, the London-based newspaper Al-Arab reported the removal of about 2,500 trees in Heliopolis between 2019 and 2020 with the expansion of road corridors, and the Goethe-Institut documented the bulldozing of parts of Merryland Park. The IQAir platform ranked Cairo, in January 2026, among the ten most polluted cities in the world because of the concentration of fine particulate matter.
As for the law, Environment Law No. 4 of 1994 provides for allocating an area of no less than 1,000 square metres of state land in every district and village to establish a nursery for producing trees, and its Article 28 prohibits cutting, damaging or trading in plants or destroying their habitats, but this prohibition concerns wild organisms and plants included on protection lists, and there is no provision in the law dedicated to urban trees and public parks, which leads the experts Zawia3 spoke to to call for separate legislation. The law defines air pollution as “any change in the properties and specifications of natural air that results in a danger to human health or to the environment”.
An Environmental Lawyer: No Legislation for Parks and Trees
Environmental lawyer Ahmed El-Saidy, head of the Egyptian Foundation for Environmental Rights, places the offering in the context of previous government policies that he believes reflect a failure to provide sufficient green spaces for residents, especially in old Cairo neighbourhoods such as Rod El-Farag, Shubra and Matariya. He tells Zawia3: “Over the past ten years Egypt has lost numerous green spaces, and there are research reports that have documented the shrinking of green spaces in various areas of Greater Cairo, among them Nasr City, Heliopolis and the central medians.”
He believes that the Ministry of Environment and the Environmental Affairs Agency have fallen short over the past two years in protecting green spaces, whether through decisions, issuing violation reports or action against encroachments on them, and that the merger of the ministries of environment and local development led to a decline in the priority of environmental protection in some local development policies. Manal Awad, the Minister of Local Development, had been assigned the duties of Minister of Environment in July 2025, before the two ministries were merged into a single ministry headed by her in 2026.
El-Saidy warns that the absence of breathing spaces in residential areas is linked to health, psychological and social problems, links the lack of green spaces to rising psychological problems and violence, and calls for parks to be treated as an environmental, health and social issue requiring legal protection and clear policies, not a cosmetic issue. He sees a gap between the “Get Ready for Green” and “100 Million Trees” initiatives and what is applied on the ground, because existing trees have consumed resources over years and planting new trees does not easily replace them: “The afforestation initiatives have good intentions, but that does not mean cutting down existing trees and then launching campaigns to plant replacement trees, and this contradiction reflects a problem in the environmental policies being applied.”
He proposes that policies shift from cutting trees to choosing species suited to the environment, pruning them, propagating them and increasing them in the new cities, limiting the use of cars in congested areas and closing some streets to them in favour of pedestrians and bicycles as in other countries, and that civil society be a partner in developing parks, not capital alone, in fulfilment of the sustainable development the constitution aims for, which involves citizens and associations in decision-making. He says his foundation has taken legal action regarding Zohriya Garden, and intends to take action regarding parks that were developed in violation of the law, among them the Obelisk Garden, which is listed in Cairo Governorate’s registers of buildings of distinctive architectural style, and which was turned into restaurants, shops and playing fields amid the bulldozing of soil and the removal of some trees, and he calls on members of the House of Representatives to issue legislation regulating the protection of trees and public parks, since its absence is, in his view, one of the biggest crises facing green spaces.
An Architect and Two Associations: Heat Islands and the Human Dimension
Architect Yahia El-Zeiny, founder of “Diwan Al-Memareyeen”, believes that development and urban expansion projects in recent years have contributed to the shrinking of green spaces within cities, and warns that replacing tree cover with hard masses and surfaces raises temperatures, lowers air quality and aggravates the heat island phenomenon, that is, the rise in the temperature of large cities above the surrounding countryside by what he estimates at between two and ten degrees Celsius, as a result of urban expansion, scarce vegetation cover and heat-absorbing building materials such as asphalt and concrete, thereby increasing energy consumption and pollution. He tells Zawia3 that in many real estate projects trees are treated as a decorative or marketing element rather than a structural component of urban design, and that many new cities and residential compounds do not use trees to shade pavements and provide safe paths for pedestrians, so that reliance on cars becomes a daily necessity.
Asmaa El-Halougy, head of the Tree Lovers Association, tells Zawia3 that offering the park for real estate investment raises environmental and humanitarian concerns, because the area around it is overcrowded and needs green spaces that improve air quality and reduce pollution, and she calls on the Endowments to take “the human dimension” into account and to put residents’ health before financial returns: “Encroaching on green spaces is not permissible, because Egyptian laws criminalise building on green spaces, including the open spaces in clubs and elsewhere, and the existing trees, shrubs and green spaces must be preserved, particularly in overcrowded residential areas.” She believes urban expansion should head towards the desert while cultivating it, questions the extent of compliance with the environmental impact assessment studies stipulated by law, and warns of the effect of heat stress, especially on the elderly.
Rania Fathy, an environmental protection consultant and secretary-general of the Ein El-Bi’a Association, explains that green spaces in residential areas provide shade and humidity, absorb carbon dioxide and provide habitats for organisms and birds, and that this takes on particular importance in a desert country like Egypt, and she tells Zawia3: “Residential compounds and tourist villages must be bound by a proportion between built-up areas and green spaces.” She points out that her association has submitted more than once, within the National Initiative for Green Projects, a project to reduce carbon with a green zone in each of the 27 governorates. But she does not reject every project that requires using part of a green space in cases of public benefit and road projects, provided that other projects are implemented to reduce emissions or trees are planted in another location.
A Climate Expert: The Offering Contradicts Egypt’s Commitments
Hisham Eissa, Egypt’s former national coordinator for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and head of the Specialised Council for Climate Change and Sustainable Development, says that Egypt is a signatory to the Paris Climate Agreement, the Convention to Combat Desertification and the Convention on Biological Diversity, and believes that establishing a real estate investment inside a green park contradicts these commitments, and he blames the Ministry of Environment for not acting to stop the offering, as the body responsible for international environmental files and agreements. He tells Zawia3: “Green spaces play a role in limiting rising temperatures and heat stress, in addition to reducing the need to use energy to run air conditioners, and they are linked to confronting the effects of climate change and improving the environmental and social conditions of residents.” He warns that expanding the removal of green spaces may weaken confidence in Egypt’s commitment to its climate pledges when it requests funding from international climate finance bodies, because when the state declares its need to increase greenery and reduce heat stress and then removes these spaces for other projects, it “sends a signal of policy inconsistency”.
In a parallel context, MP Haidy El-Maghazy, a member of the House of Representatives for the Coordination of Party Youth Leaders and Politicians and Al-Adl Party, submitted a question to the Minister of Local Development and Environment about the repeated cutting down and removal of trees in the streets of Cairo and Giza despite instructions prohibiting cutting or excessive pruning without referring to the technical authorities. She asked who holds the decision to cut, about the criteria for removal, and whether inspections, technical reports and committee approvals actually precede implementation, and said that preserving trees “needs a unified and binding system, not random decisions from one district to another”, with mechanisms for oversight and accountability and a database of the tree stock. She called on the government to disclose the number of trees cut down in Cairo and Giza over the past two years, broken down by district, along with the reasons for cutting and the approvals, and to announce the regulations governing cutting to the public.
Between an announcement calling for “the maximum exploitation” of the entire land, and an approved plan that does not allow, according to the constituency’s MP, building on more than 5% of it, Rod El-Farag Park, with its two pitches and its trees that the MP himself described two months ago as a forest, awaits what the authority will decide after sorting the studies it received, and the government’s response to two parliamentary questions that have not yet been answered.
