{"id":16904,"date":"2026-07-05T20:08:05","date_gmt":"2026-07-05T18:08:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/?p=16904"},"modified":"2026-10-24T15:00:19","modified_gmt":"2026-10-24T13:00:19","slug":"zahriya-garden-zamalk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/zahriya-garden-zamalk\/","title":{"rendered":"11,000 Signatures and a Lawsuit: Zamalek Residents Resist Al Zahriya Garden Redevelopment"},"content":{"rendered":"

On 3 June, the residents of Cairo’s Zamalek district woke up to scenes of equipment and caravans entering the heritage Al Zahriya Garden, which dates back more than 150 years, in preparation for the start of development works that had first been talked about two years earlier and had been met with rejection.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>In 2024, member of the House of Representatives Samira El-Gazzar <\/span>submitted<\/span><\/a> a briefing request to the Speaker of the House, to be directed to the Prime Minister and the ministers of environment, agriculture and urban development, regarding the closure of the heritage Al Zahriya Garden in order to hand it over to a “sovereign body” to begin development works.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>The MP stressed that what is happening goes against the wishes of the residents of Zamalek, who consider the garden the last breathing space left to them, after what she described as the “tampering” with the heritage Obelisk Garden as well, stressing that gardens are the public property of citizens, but the government is determined to continue the same approach of tampering, bulldozing green spaces and cutting down trees.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>In this context, Enas Tawfik, a resident of Zamalek, tells Zawia3 that residents’ concern grew with the emergence of reports that caravans and equipment had entered the garden, which signals the start of a mysterious project to develop it, prompting them to launch the “Save Al Zahriya Garden” campaign on social media pages, demanding a halt to any works that would turn the public garden into a commercial zone.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>The residents also submitted collective complaints to the Cabinet’s unified complaints hotline, demanding the immediate suspension of the project, no bulldozing of the garden and the conduct of environmental impact studies, while they also submitted a community <\/span>petition<\/span><\/a> that has so far collected more than 11,000 signatures.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>Because everything happening inside Al Zahriya Garden is being done in a mysterious way, without the announcement of any details about the body behind the development works, the area that will be carved out of the garden, or the extent of its compliance with the constitution and the law, the Egyptian Foundation for Environmental Rights announced on 7 June the filing of an urgent lawsuit<\/a> before the Abdeen Court for Urgent Matters, registered as No. 475 of 2026, with a hearing set for Sunday 5 July 2026. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the lawsuit, the foundation, a civil society organisation specialising in environmental law and the public interest that was registered under the rules of Egyptian law, demands the appointment of one of the Ministry of Justice’s experts, whose task would be to go immediately to inspect the garden and record its current condition, in addition to identifying the companies that placed the caravans and building materials inside the garden, establishing their legal basis for doing so, reviewing the contracts concluded by those companies, and identifying the employee responsible for and tasked with following up these procedures within the Ministry of Agriculture, as well as disclosing the proposed plan to develop the garden and the extent to which it observes environmental requirements, the most important of which is the preparation of an environmental impact assessment study, and the extent to which these projects observe the urban harmony guide relating to the preservation of heritage gardens.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

For his part, Ahmed El-Saidi, an environmental lawyer and chair of the foundation’s board of trustees, says that the aim of the lawsuit filed so far is to record the situation and reveal the bodies responsible for the development and the development plan itself, because a state of ambiguity surrounds the situation, and no employee gives any useful information in answer to the residents’ questions.<\/span><\/p>\n

El-Saidi adds to Zawia3 that Article 19 of the <\/span>Environment Law<\/span><\/a> obliges any project implemented by a government body or a private entity to conduct environmental impact assessment studies, and an essential part of these studies is the holding of two public hearing sessions to which the parties potentially affected by the project are invited, which has not happened, whether with the associations concerned with environmental rights or with the residents of Zamalek.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>In September, the “Zamalek Gardens” page <\/span>published<\/span><\/a> a plan for the alleged project, including a hotel, sports fields, shops, a theatre and a gym, noting that the plan in circulation would be built on 17% of the garden’s area.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>Ahmed El-Saidi says there is more than one development model in circulation, but none of them has been officially announced to the residents, explaining that according to the urban harmony guide for dealing with the Zamalek area and its gardens, building is not permitted on more than 2% of the garden, and if the plan exceeds this percentage, large green spaces will be lost.<\/span><\/p>\n

The environmental lawyer notes that residents have serious fears that what happened to the Obelisk Garden in the same district will happen to Al Zahriya Garden, as works began inside it on the pretext of development as part of the <\/span>project<\/span><\/a> to develop Khedivial Cairo, and it ended with the bulldozing of green spaces, and the trees became decoration between the shops.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>According to the guide<\/a> to the principles and standards of urban harmony for heritage buildings and areas, issued by the National Organisation for Urban Harmony affiliated with the Ministry of Culture, Al Zahriya Garden falls within zone “A” on Zamalek Island, an environmental protection zone that must be protected by reducing the areas occupied by buildings, so that construction covers an area not exceeding only 2%. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Over the past two years, the <\/span>Obelisk<\/span><\/a> Garden, which is listed in Cairo Governorate’s registers of buildings and structures of distinctive architectural style, <\/span>saw<\/span><\/a> the <\/span>implementation<\/span><\/a> of an investment project to turn it into an area of restaurants, shops and sports fields, with the bulldozing of soil, the removal of some trees and the alteration of its historic features, according to what was published in 2025 by the Zamalek Development Association, which is a <\/span>registered civil society organisation that aims to preserve the heritage of the historic Zamalek district<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

In October 2025, Minister of Local Development Dr Manal Awad <\/span>opened<\/span><\/a> the garden, stating that what the garden underwent was a development that included preserving all the rare and heritage trees and plants inside the garden, with the planting of more than 1,600 new trees of species suited to the Egyptian environment, without any mention or denial of soil bulldozing or the establishment of commercial projects.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/span>Recommended reading: <\/b>One Kilo of Fish Costs the Sea Ten: The Arithmetic of Overfishing in the Red Sea<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

Al Zahriya Garden: Mother of Egyptian Plants<\/b><\/h1>\n

While Khedive Ismail was building Khedivial Cairo and developing Zamalek Island by building Gezira Palace and the many gardens extending around it, to receive the world’s kings and princes at the opening ceremony of the Suez Canal in 1869, Al Zahriya Garden was at the heart of the Gezira gardens.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>According to a documentary <\/span>film<\/span><\/a> produced by the Bibliotheca Alexandrina to introduce Egypt’s cultural and natural heritage, Khedive Ismail commissioned Jean-Pierre Deschamps, chief gardener of the forests of Boulogne and of France, to supervise the gardens of Gezira Palace, together with his assistant Gustave Delchevalerie, who later became superintendent of the Khedivial and government gardens, so that the island was later transformed into a large acclimatisation garden and the first station for planting new plants and acclimatising them to Egypt’s climate, in an experiment that was the first of its kind.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>The heritage Al Zahriya Garden was the centre of the acclimatisation experiments, as it includes greenhouses built of an iron frame covered with glass panels that protect plants arriving from tropical regions from night frost in winter, the Khamaseen winds in spring and high temperatures in summer. The island was beautified with more than a million plants, until most of Cairo’s trees became descendants of the trees that Khedive Ismail brought from all over the world more than 150 years ago.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>In May 2025, the Zamalek Development Association sent<\/a> an appeal to the President of the Republic, which referred to the start of the clearing of historic greenhouses from the era of Khedive Ismail in preparation for establishing an investment project including caf\u00e9 and restaurant areas, demanding a halt to the project, the cancellation of any investment licences in the garden and its preservation as a public green space, while encouraging private-sector sponsorship of the gardens without exploiting them commercially, through sponsoring monthly cultural or environmental events, developing nurseries, selling plants and using the gardens for heritage tourism tours, and stressing the involvement of civil society and experts in managing these gardens and preserving rare trees and plants.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Among the most famous trees of Al Zahriya Garden is the <\/span>Bengal fig tree<\/span><\/a>, which is more than 100 years old; it is the most famous tree on Zamalek Island and in Egypt as well, and it used to stand in the middle of Al Zahriya Garden before El-Borg Street was cut through and the garden was divided into two parts.<\/span><\/p>\n

With the construction of Cairo Tower and the Faculty of Physical Education on part of Al Zahriya Garden’s area, its area became 8 feddans, and it has survived to this day as part of Egypt’s plant heritage and diversity.<\/span><\/p>\n

The <\/span>guide<\/span><\/a> to the principles and standards of urban harmony considered the entire Zamalek area a heritage area. As for Al Zahriya Garden, the guide recorded that it was established in 1871 during the reign of Khedive Ismail and covers an area of 50,000 square metres, containing a million planted plants representing 2,000 varieties, and that it is a garden open to visitors. <\/span>The <\/span>price<\/span><\/a> of an entry ticket to Al Zahriya Garden currently stands at EGP 10, which residents worry will change after the development works.<\/span><\/p>\n

Zawia3 tried to contact Eng. Mohamed Abu Saada, head of the National Organisation for Urban Harmony, to learn any details about the Al Zahriya Garden development project and the extent of its compliance with the rules of the urban harmony guide, but to no avail.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

A New Briefing Request and Residents’ Demands<\/b><\/h1>\n

On 8 June, after the caravans and construction equipment entered Al Zahriya Garden, MP Dalia El-Saadany, a member of the House of Representatives, <\/span>submitted<\/span><\/a> a new statement to the Speaker of the House, addressed to the Prime Minister and the ministers of local development, culture, antiquities, agriculture and environment, calling on the government to clarify the nature of the project being implemented inside the garden and the bodies that own, implement and supervise it, and whether the necessary approvals had been obtained from the bodies responsible for protecting heritage and historic gardens, as well as to disclose the number of trees that have been cut down, moved or removed since the works began, and whether environmental and heritage impact assessment studies had been carried out before implementation.<\/span><\/p>\n

The MP also called for the immediate suspension of any removal works or tree-cutting until the entire project is presented to public opinion and the competent authorities, with the formation of a joint committee including representatives of the ministries of culture, agriculture, environment, tourism and antiquities and of the National Organisation for Urban Harmony to review the project and assess its effects.<\/span><\/p>\n

She stressed the need to publish an official report containing a full inventory of the historic and rare trees inside the garden and their current condition, noting that development should aim to improve the garden’s efficiency and preserve its historic identity and green spaces, not change its character or diminish its heritage value.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>Enas Tawfik says that the residents of Zamalek cherish their district, which was home to writers and thinkers such as Umm Kulthum, Abdel Wahab, Edward Said and Youssef Chahine, and which is now turning into a large “food court”, while according to the latest count Zamalek has 209 restaurants and caf\u00e9s, so it does not need more; the residents want trees to breathe from.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>She adds to Zawia3 that Al Zahriya Garden is part of the memory of Zamalek and a basic pillar of its planning 158 years ago, and changing it means erasing the district’s identity and eliminating an important lung within it, noting that the garden must not be treated as vacant land, as it is an environmental heritage that includes long-lived trees and rare plant strains, and future generations have the right for “Al Zahriya” to remain a public garden for all Egyptians.<\/span><\/p>\n

She stresses that the demands of Zamalek’s residents are that any development plans respect the principles of sustainable development, respect residents’ needs, protect the environment and preserve heritage.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Recommended reading: <\/b>El-Khusus Water: A Dark Colour, the Smell of Sewage and Officials Unaware of the Problem for 10 Years<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

The Economy or the Environment?<\/b> <\/span><\/h1>\n

For his part, Dr Adel Moatamed, professor of environmental geography at Assiut University and at King Khalid University in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, who takes an interest in conducting studies in the fields of environmental impact assessment, the ecological footprint and climate change, says there is an old debate between the economic school and the environmental school: proponents of the economic school believe that development projects must receive support and that we should pay no attention to the environmental or other impacts on the place as long as there is a financial and economic return.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>Proponents of the environmental school, on the other hand, believe that the environment is an integral part of human life and the reason humans stay alive through the resources it provides, and therefore development projects cannot be considered without taking environmental aspects into account.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>The professor of environmental geography explains to Zawia3 that, to get out of this impasse, environmental scientists arrived at an important mechanism that enabled them to strike a balance between environmental goals and, at the same time, not being absolutely hostile to development projects, namely environmental impact assessment studies, which are based on conducting a pre-emptive study of any development project, covering all the elements and components of the natural environment, living and non-living, and the impacts on these components after the project begins operating, ultimately producing decisions and recommendations aimed at maximising positive impacts and minimising negative ones.<\/span><\/p>\n

As for Al Zahriya Garden, Moatamed believes that it lies in an area that is the most fortunate in the country in terms of green spaces, explaining that over the last 10 years Egypt has lost about 5 million<\/a> square metres (about 5 square kilometres) of those spaces, and Cairo<\/a> alone has lost 32 square kilometres of green space. Zamalek specifically has lost about 25% of its green spaces in recent years, and this loss was at the level of its gardens.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He notes that Zamalek was the only district in Cairo that met the global rate of per capita green space, as the global rate is 9 metres per person, and Zamalek provided its residents with 10 metres, exceeding the global rate, before the declines; if the development trend of exploiting or converting part of the green spaces to other uses or activities continues, this could negatively affect plant life, the indicator will decline, and we will lose an area that we could call a natural green lung.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>According to <\/span>data<\/span><\/a> from the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS), per capita green space in Egypt stood at only 17 cm as of 2020, while the global rate is 9 metres, owing to several factors including tree-cutting, the bulldozing of green spaces and unregulated urban sprawl.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/span>The professor of environmental geography continues that Al Zahriya Garden contains extremely important plant species, with a large number of trees such as the Bengal fig and the tamarind, and plants such as violets and tropical orchids, explaining that the decline of green spaces due to development projects may cause what is known as contamination, meaning the deliberate pollution, as a result of human activity, of the environment and its components of soil and water, and the resulting loss of part of biodiversity.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Climatic, Environmental and Psychological Problems<\/b><\/h1>\n

<\/span>The professor of environmental geography stresses that green spaces offer people a psychological dimension in the form of a kind of ease and harmony between them and the place where they live, an aspect often overlooked by the owners of development projects; these spaces also bring people social and economic benefits.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>At the environmental level, the removal of green spaces leads to climatic and environmental problems, because the presence of a tree anywhere means absorbing carbon dioxide, producing oxygen and reducing the severity of global warming, and removing it gives greater scope for the release of gases and for disturbances in temperatures and changes in their values, and reduces evaporation and therefore the chances of rainfall.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>Moatamed stresses that a tree is not just wood and green leaves, but a very special ecosystem in which many living organisms invisible to the naked eye live, along with birds, insects and rodents; it is an integral part of the place, enriching the soil and protecting it from erosion, and it brings residents many social, economic and psychological benefits that affect their lives.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>He adds that vegetation cover in Egypt is indeed scarce, but there are particular areas where biodiversity thrives, including Zamalek, which records lower temperatures than areas deprived of vegetation cover, and its survival is important for a city classified among the most polluted, such as Cairo, as it offers its residents a richer way of life in terms of the quality of soil, air and water.<\/span><\/p>\n

The city<\/a> of Cairo is classified among the 10 most polluted cities, according to the global platform IQAir, because of the concentration of fine particulate matter in the air, which exceeds safe levels several times over.<\/p>\n

Moatamed points out that deprivation of vegetation cover leads to higher temperatures, lower humidity, declining biodiversity, increased dust storm activity and other negative effects, and therefore, however large the material returns of the economic project, the negative side will be more evident.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Everything being said about the development project contradicts what is set out in the Egyptian <\/span>constitution<\/span><\/a> in Article 45, which guarantees the protection and development of green spaces in urban areas, the preservation of plant, animal and fish resources and the protection of those exposed to extinction or danger, and Article 50, which stipulates that Egypt’s civilisational and cultural heritage, tangible and intangible, in all its diversity, is a national and human wealth that the state is committed to preserving and maintaining.<\/span><\/p>\n

While the government affirms in similar projects that its goal is development without harming heritage or trees, residents and experts believe that the absence of official information and the failure to announce the plan or the results of environmental impact assessment studies increase fears about the future of a garden that represents part of Cairo’s history and urban identity.<\/span><\/p>\n

As the hearing of the lawsuit approaches, the fate of “Al Zahriya” remains suspended between investment considerations and the requirements of protecting heritage and the environment, in a new test of the state’s ability to achieve the development equation without giving up what remains of its historic green spaces.<\/span><\/p>\n

Editorial correction: The first version of the report stated that 5 million square metres is equivalent to 50,000 kilometres; the correct figure is that it is equivalent to about 5 square kilometres.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Per capita green space in Egypt is 17 centimetres compared with 9 metres globally, and Cairo lost 32 kilometres of its green cover in ten years, while the heritage Al Zahriya Garden in Zamalek faces a development project that has not been officially announced and for which no environmental impact study has been carried out, prompting the district’s residents to collect 11,000 signatures and file a lawsuit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":15819,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[413],"tags":[],"kateb":[15844],"class_list":["post-16904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society-en","kateb-yasmin-ali"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/\u062d\u062f\u064a\u0642\u0629-\u0627\u0644\u0632\u0647\u0631\u064a\u0629.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16904"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23992,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16904\/revisions\/23992"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16904"},{"taxonomy":"kateb","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/kateb?post=16904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}