Yerevan Council of Elders member urging Pashinyan to intervene and  stop " mass tree felling"  in Yerevan

ArmInfo.Kristine Vardanyan, a member of the Yerevan Council of Elders and associate professor of the Department of Hygiene and Ecology at Yerevan State Medical University, has issued an open letter to Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan urging an immediate intervention to stop the mass felling of mature and healthy trees in Yerevan. 

Vardanyan's letter, published on Facebook, highlights a three-year  trend in which Yerevan has been stripped of thousands of "sanitarily  valuable" mature trees. These are being replaced with decorative  species-such as Albizia and Catalpa-which she argues are ill-suited  for the city's harsh climate and fail to provide the necessary shade  and air filtration required for urban health.

"Considering the seriousness of the issue in terms of public health,  the environment, and biodiversity, I consider it necessary to address  you with the aim of protecting Armenian residents from numerous  risks.  Since Soviet times, these plants have been planted in Yerevan  exclusively in gardens and vegetable plots.  Landscape design is a  branch of public hygiene. Around the world, in the face of climate  change, emphasis is placed on the importance and preservation of  mature trees and native species, while in Yerevan, the exact opposite  is being done: mass logging, deep pruning that disfigures trees, and  alien, in many cases street plantings created from plants with dwarf  foliage," Vardanyan noted.

In this regard, as a member of the Yerevan Council of Elders, a  physician, scientist, and landscaping specialist who has spent  decades engaged in scientific and applied work on the greening of  populated areas, she called on Pashinyan to intervene and request the  results of a comprehensive scientific analysis of the mature tree  replacement program, which has grave consequences for public health.

"After the Velvet Revolution, as an opposition member of the Council  of Elders from 2019 to 2022, I worked with the My Step faction on  Yerevan's environmental program. Later, with the Greening and  Environmental Protection NGO of the Yerevan Municipality,  where we  fought for every tree, launched mass tree treatments, and banned deep  pruning. The methodology being used today is, to put it mildly,  flawed. Scientific evidence indicates that this process will lead to  a decline in quality of life, morbidity, and mortality. This is not a  matter of political speculation, given that lives, especially those  of newborns, are at stake," Vardanyan noted.

In her letter, the Council of Elders member recalled which specific  streets in Yerevan are currently devoid of mature trees: Moskovyan,  Sayat-Nova, Amiryan (partially), Tumanyan, Melik-Adamyan, Alek  Manukyan, Paronyan, Proshyan, Ulnetsi, and Bagratunyats. "Such a  massive tree replacement in a hot climate should be carried out in  stages, strictly adhering to international scientific experience and  standards, and involving a team of independent experts and  scientists. Meanwhile, Yerevan doesn't even have a chief  dendrologist," the expert noted.

Vardanyan also expressed dissatisfaction with the amendments made to  RA Law No. 110 on "Environmental Impact Assessment" (EIA) on May 3,  2023, making the felling of trees on streets a process that does not  require an EIA expert review. "It turns out that the felling of  thousands of trees on the streets has no impact on the environment.  This contradicts the Aarhus Convention of the United Nations Economic  Commission for Europe on Access to Information, Public Participation  in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters,"  the Council of Elders member noted.  In conclusion, Vardanyan  presented the assessments of international experts. Thus, according  to her, in one of the response letters, experts from France, Great  Britain, Russia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan unanimously stated:  "Don't strip the streets of mature trees; restoring the damaged  ecological framework of the city will be terribly difficult; it will  take decades to restore what was lost." "For his part, Michel Pena,  former president of the French Federation of Landscape Architects and  a member of the UNESCO Scientific Council, wrote: 'Save mature trees,  learn from our mistakes,'" Vardanyan concluded.  It should be noted  that, starting in 2023, Yerevan City Hall has been implementing a  so-called tree replacement program, particularly in the city center.  Authorities explain this initiative by "the need to renew trees that  are losing their viability with more valuable species." However,  experts believe that the city hall is actually committing an ecocide.  Despite persistent warnings from environmentalists about the  illegality of such actions, authorities continue to cut down the  city's elms, which provide shade on the streets during hot weather,  replacing them with trees unsuited to Yerevan's climate.