Vanishing Greenery: For North Macedonia’s Developers, Law Protecting Urban Green Space is no Obstacle

There will also no longer be any space for the gardens that surrounded the old buildings, or for the trees that used to grow there.

These trees were not only of sentimental value to old Skopje residents, or important for activists seeking more humane urban development.

Their survival in a city that regularly tops the global air pollution charts should have been guaranteed by a Law on Urban Greenery that the country's parliament passed in 2018.

As in the previous cases, however, the trees were cut down because it was more profitable for the developers to pay the maximum penalty for their destruction than to lose valuable construction space because of them.

When a tree ends up on the wrong side of a construction fence, its days are usually numbered. Photo:BIRN

Paying fines is preferable to losing big profits

The 2018 law states that, whether the trees are on state or private land or not, they may not be cut down without the approval of experts from the City of Skopje.

Felling is allowed only if the tree is old, sick, unstable, damaged by a storm, or poses a risk of damaging the surrounding space and the like.

Cutting down healthy and stable trees is financially penalised.

City inspectors issued 13 fines for the illegal cutting down of trees in the past three years.

Five fines, ranging from 800 to 1,800 euros, were issued against construction companies, two against public institutions and the other six against citizens who were fined 50 euros each for removing healthy trees from their yards.

Thirty mature trees were lost in this way due to construction, as can be seen from historical satellite images.

Skopje City Councillor Gorjan Jovanovski, a member of...