According to @Almajlliss, the baladiya will start fining people who plant greenery in front of their homes (on government property) 1,000 KD. Yup, if you want to make your neighborhood greener, expect to pay a hefty fine doing so.
I don’t know why stuff like this still shocks me and I really really don’t get this hatred towards trees here.
24 replies on “KD1,000 Fine for Planting Trees on Government Property”
It says fining people who plant trees in front of their homes without a permit 🤷🏻♂️
start fining*
Yes thanks
Unless you are planting specific kinds of indigenous cacti, you are doing more harm to the environment than good. Even the trees that survive Kuwait’s summer heat use exorbitant amounts of water. This water is desalinated in the most environmentally destructive way, by burning very low grade and highly polluting hydrocarbons. The worst part about this is that all the information I stated here is known to everyone, but somehow people don’t piece it together. Want to save the environment and fight global warming, then let the desert be a desert. The only exception to this is the reclaimed water from the subiya reverse osmosis plant (which is already used for the wild life reserve in jahra). Sure it could be managed better and piped to other areas, but we still have whole districts that rely on water and sewage tankers because of horrible infrastructure, so that won’t be happening any time soon.
Want to save water? How about applying some rules to help. In the US for example shower heads and toilets have specifications so not to waste more water than they need to. Also limits are set on watering your front yard and such. If you’ve watched people here washing their cars you’d see how much water goes to waste.
Making Kuwait greener wouldn’t be an environmental catastrophe.
It’s not about saving water, its saving the energy (and pollutants) that go into desalinating water. In the example you sited, when countries that have lots of rainfall go through a drought they put restrictions on watering plants, well we’ve had a drought for hundreds of years here. If England found itself with 70mm rainfall per year they would reinstate capital punishment for watering plants. Yes, and that an absolute emphatic yes, making Kuwait greener is an environmental calamity, unless they find a way not to use desalinated water.
What I’m stating here is not a radical idea. KISR and KFAS spent a few years examining this and trying to make it work with different trees and came to the conclusion that anything other the naturally occurring cacti is a net negative for carbon emissions.
As for saving water from car washing etc.. that is a valid point, but has no effect on the net negative of planting water hungry trees in a towering inferno. Planting trees is still a net negative even if you ban everyone washing their car and limit showers to once a week.
Ok but what you’re saying also doesn’t make sense. You’re against people planting greenery in front of their homes, but you’re ok with them planting in their backyard? Because the discussion here is about requiring a permit to plant in front of your house and not even planting should be banned or not. Your argument would mean nobody should plant anything anywhere and whatever greenery we do have should be uprooted and destroyed.
Also, cactuses aren’t the only dessert plants, we have trees in Kuwait that survive in the desert and don’t need to be artificially watered. I mean as an example the 25 trees that were removed in old Salmiya were never watered and they were huge.
I am against all planting of trees and grass until they start watering it from reclaimed sewage water. Otherwise you are contributing more carbon than the trees can neutralize. I am also not saying the reason the baladiya is issuing fines has anything to do with the environment. Who knows what those morons are thinking. They recently removed almost every single car shade in Salmiya. Logic is not their strong suit.
As for the trees that were removed in old Salmiya. They were watered by a tanker truck on a weekly basis in the summer and every 3-4 weeks in the winter. However, I don’t agree with cutting down established trees, because once a tree gets to a certain age (depends on the genus) it will be able to withstand summer drought by basically dying in the summer and coming back to life in the winter. Trees require the most amount water as they are still growing, so the major environmental impact was already done, and cutting them down once they are established is exceptionally idiotic.
Places like Abu Dhabi which have plenty of man made greenery recognized this same problem, but because there are people capable of planning employed by their government they switched all tree irrigation to reclaimed sewage. Even places that have plenty of rainfall like Singapore use brackish and reclaimed sewage to water trees.
To illustrate the point further, a medium sized tree of 24in diameter requires 240 gallons of water per week. That figure is in a normal climate where a hot summer day is 35c. In this environment with 50c+ days you can expect to double this figure due to evaporation from the ground and the leaves. It really is a shit ton of water, and a shit ton of hydrocarbons to evaporate sea water to produce drinking water. Also, there is a big impact on marine life from desalination, though I don’t know the specifics on that so I won’t elaborate, but it’s more than just carbon emissions.
The Salmiya trees were not watered with a tanker every week. You are probably talking about different trees I’m talking about the ones that were in barayeh salem. I know they weren’t watered because I live over the trees (my building is on the street) and used to walk my dog there three times a day every day for like 8 years. There are plenty of trees like that.
You need a permit, which makes sense
Not really because getting a permit would be a hassle (have you tried getting anything done in kuwait before?)
Instead planting greenery should be encouraged and instead of a permit a set of rules instead could be provided to follow.
Yes I have & I’ve got my permit on spot to plant around my house. Not everyone has standards, as we’ve see many Conocarpus being planted. So I’m all for this rule
Really? What was the process could you let us know?
I got mine through the Engineering Consultant Office (المكتب الهندسي) that handled the build permit if you are in the process of building/renovating a house. In case you are not aware, you cannot build or do major renovations to property in Kuwait (mot countries actually) without the involvement of an registered engineering consultant. I’ve just signed a few papers with the engineering office and they got me the 2 year permit with drawing showing exactly the area you are allowed to plant. You can go do it yourself, get the file of your property and sign the papers for the permit. The permit has some rules such as:
– The total green area cannot be more than 100% of your land plot size
– You can only plant in the area shown on the drawing
– Plants cannot block pedestrian or traffic view
– plants cannot block the way for pedestrians
– You cannot claim for damages made to your plants due to government work related to road, electricity, phone, water lines, etc.
Thanks!
Mark, I think Kuwait Municipality is targetting illegal encroachment on government property by way of either car park sheds or extending house boundary by planting various trees and shrubs around. This has nothing to do with ‘hatred towards trees’.
It would be interesting to know if I can plant a tree on government property say in the US for example.
You can’t.
They would do the same in Canada. There are many sides to this that you are missing. One is that it’s not thier land. In Canada if you make your driveway bigger or make your lawn bigger by covering your driveway with grass or trees they will fine you. If you remove a tree from your backyard they will fine you
You haven’t lived overseas much bro in a long time and Kuwait does a lot of things wrong but some of the things are the same everywhere else.
My brother in law made his front lawn bigger, cost him about 5k.
The baladiya came down and told him to remove it or he will be fined 10k. He did the work him self to save money got so tired he had a heart attack.
It’s not their land and even the land that they sell you there are rules and laws.
Key words here are “without a permit”. In my area my neighbor built a playground with a lawn on a seafront government plot of land after getting a permit. This fine seems less about hatred of trees and more that there are regulations that people need to follow before doing what they want on government property.
Nice to see the comments defending not hating for once.
Planting trees on government property can destroy water pipes. Several native trees, including date trees, have extremely destructive roots which find their way into government water pipes. This can either lead to the pipe bursting or the roots block water flow. This happens regularly in rumaythia where people regularly plant trees on government property.
Why are you being so negative Mark?
The thing is, these areas are called right of way. This is where everything from power, to water to telecommunication, to drainage etc fall.
The roots can damage these cables and pipes.
The as built drawings are all with the municipality, they know exactly where this network is underground.
This may cause major damage which will need alot of time, effort and money to fix.
Granted getting a permit to plant trees is probably a challenge. However it is something that needs to be done. You need to know the underground services before planting. Especially in residential areas.
For large scale govt sponsored planting Sokommonos is spot on, and exclaimed it better than I could. HOWEVER, does the govt understand that and is that their reasoning… I have my doubts
And on the topic of native plants, I believe there’s many shrubs but only ONE single tree.. some acacia subspecies that was used to be found in small numbers in the north only.
i find it hilarious how many people are pro the tree ban in the font yard, the whole discussion is funny but if the trees we use destroy govt pipes, then maybe the govt should build better pipes or devlop use more uptodate or creative solutions, Trees everywhere please, and they should start recycling sewage water to make sokomonononsos happy and strict fishing laws and water usage laws, everything is possible the govt just needs to take action also man no kashtas unless they get a permit for the location and time the desert is full of garbage now.
btw its not official the whole thing is just a suggestion.