Urban Trees – A citizen’s perspective.

Ploff.net is all about joining voices all together… Personally, “I simply try to look for similarities among different minds, and try to shine a light over the points in common within each vision in order to weave a body of core ideas from all the spectrum of the human intellect.”[1]

This is why today I invite you to enjoy a different awareness newsletter, written by a special guest: Ezequiel Benvenuto, a faithful friend and committed Natural Resources and Environmental Engineering student, who shares with us the following awareness lines on urban trees, invaluable martyrs of nature, who represent her inside the city:

“800 hundred year ago: “the Great Khan adopted a wise and useful disposition. He ordered to plant trees in both sides of public roads… to mark the path and stop anyway to get apart from him whenever the land is covered with snow… astrologists of the kingdom have said to the Great Kahn that he who plants trees has a long life ensured.[2]

We see how our everyday experiences go along every day, as if letting everything go past by us was part of the routine, as well as not minding about anything or anyone, unless our interests are compromised. This is the key when trying to understand how the society of Santa Rosa behaves with its dear trees. It does not mind us at all that our neighbor is cutting, or “mutilating” a tree on the sidewalk; but hey, wait!, in summer we enjoy remaining relaxed beneath their shadow or we like to leave the car parked beneath their shade, but our neighbor “stole our place”, because we decided to pay no attention to the moment our neighbor was chopping down the branches of the tree.

Today it is me, a simple student, the one who writes. A Student living flooded with uncertainties about life and the reasons for certain actions taken within society, which lives immersed in a world which has no exit sign whatsoever if it continues to go down this road…

And I think… the little importance given to the urban trees by the actions in this society, although we know how important they are. We do not need to be experts; arguments exist in excess to say that the tree must stay, and stand, no matter if his branches bother a little bit. Santa Rosa is a city where little attention is paid to this matter, the citizen has never been informed about the importance trees have. Here I give you some benefits a simple tree in your sidewalk can give you:

–          They purify the air,

–          They bring shade, for reading, or sharing a mate, or simply to sit under it,

–          They provide us the singing of birds, as it gives shelter to them,

–          It retains the dust in the air carried by the winds,

–          And tell me, in autumn, what is more beautiful than stepping on top of the leaves and feel them crunch beneath you?

Here, in Santa Rosa, the laws are on top of the table, but as always happens, the arrangements and bureaucratic managements do not allow capable people on the subject to go out and apply the fines required and control the ways in which urban trees are treated.

As the urban trees and green spaces ordinance says in its 5^th article, “the Environmental Protection and Public Services Management, through the Public Spaces Sub-management or whom replaces it in the future, is the only one which will be able to introduce and/or substitute public trees and green spaces, and do any action referred to maintenance and development of them.”

Needless to say that the citizen has the right to plant or take away any tree they want, but inside its legal propriety, and not in the sidewalk. Thus, we see how every day, dozens of trees are mutilated in the city, only because “the leaves bother me” or “a bush looks nicer”; or  for aesthetic reasons they take an old tree out and put a new-born…

But it is not all darkness on this matter; in our city, and for more than a year now, exists a non-profit group named “In Defence of Urban Trees”, that, by their own means, are in charge of creating a buzz inside the municipality for them to start acting against these failures given for so many years now. Not so far from here, in the city of General Pico, an estate policy exists on the matter. In order to implement it, an enabled pruners record has been created, which ultimately restrains the pruning to them, and not to the common citizen. Moreover, it has been ordered that “each educational establishment must plant a carob tree and a Caldén tree, as both species constitute an undoubtedly symbol of the Tree´s idiosyncrasies of La Pampa.” [3]

And leaving the province for a while, an article was emitted from the WHO (World Health Organization) a couple of days ago, on the current state of the tree density per habitant in the city of Buenos Aires. This entity, establishes a minimum of 10 to 15 square metres of green space per inhabitant, but the big city has only 6,21 square meters. Technically, a lack of trees exists in the city, where they are strongly required for pollution control and avoiding the excessive heat during the summer.

In all, we have seen the little importance given by the citizenship in issues regarding the environment. Nowadays, and knowing how thing are (environmentally speaking), I cannot believe the answer given by a professor of mine when he said: “ecology and environmental sciences are only fashion nowadays, because it is what sells”

People do not give real value to the tiny thing in life which we have right in front of us; they do not see the beauty in the singing of a bird, or by only seeing a falling leave all the way down from the top of a tree. They live immersed in a lie from which nearly no one can escape, surrounded by electronic artefacts, cell phones, computers, television, hiding more and more from everything; but I believe that a paradigm shift of a few, can alter reality gradually, as so many times occurred in history… and they will change.

Picture: Ezequiel Benvenuto and Ele Brandoni planting a tree at steps of the House of Representatives of La Pampa Province.

And it is me saying this, a boy that started his career with very little expectative, and that with only a couple of years studying realized that a shift in the way of thinking of the society as a whole exists, and that it can only be carried out by us, the youth; it is us the ones who need to ask ourselves in what kind of world, or city, we want to live the day after tomorrow…

An old hindu proverb says: “The Earth never forgets that the tree is her first thought”

Ezequiel Benvenuto.-

Until Next Week,

Brian Longstaff.-

Bibliography.

Pictures extracted from Google.

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