Editor's note: This report is based on resident community accounts and social media observations originating from r/UAE. No official source URL or municipal statement was available at the time of filing. Dubai Municipality did not respond to requests for comment. This story proceeds under conditional editorial approval with the sourcing gap noted.
Workers have uprooted and felled large, mature trees at Ittihad Park on Palm Jumeirah, leaving specimens lying on bare ground across sections of what residents describe as one of Dubai's few genuinely shaded public green spaces — with no official explanation posted, no public consultation conducted, and no communication from Dubai Municipality about what is planned for the cleared land.
"Palm Ittihad Park used to be one of the few genuinely green, shaded places in Dubai," wrote one resident in a widely circulated community post that drew significant engagement from the UAE's online community. "Over the past few days, workers have uprooted and cut down large mature trees and left them on the ground. Whole sections of the park now look stripped and abandoned. If this is redevelopment, safety, or disease control, why is there no clear public explanation? Mature trees are not decorative items you replace overnight."
The clearance arrives at a moment of acute environmental scrutiny for Dubai. The UAE hosted COP28 in late 2023, presenting itself to the world as a nation committed to energy transition, net-zero emissions by 2050, and the expansion of urban biodiversity. Officials from the UAE's Ministry of Climate Change and Environment made pledges during the conference on urban resilience and green space. The unexplained removal of mature trees from a public park — with no disclosure, no timeline, and no response to public questions — sits poorly against those commitments.
<h2>What Mature Trees Actually Represent</h2>
In a desert city like Dubai, the distinction between a mature tree and a replacement sapling is not aesthetic — it is functional and ecological. A mature canopy tree provides shade that measurably reduces ambient surface temperatures in its immediate surroundings, a critical service in a city where summer temperatures regularly exceed 45 degrees Celsius. It contributes to air quality, supports insect and bird populations, and represents years of sustained irrigation investment in one of the world's most water-stressed environments.
A replacement sapling will take a decade or more to provide comparable ecological function — if it survives the transplant and the climate at all. Arborists working in the region consistently note that planting new trees is not a like-for-like substitute for removing established ones, particularly in high-heat, high-salinity Gulf environments where tree establishment rates are significantly lower than in temperate climates.
Residents and environmental advocates have speculated about possible justifications — planned redevelopment of the park, disease or pest control measures, root system safety concerns — but stress that none of these would excuse the absence of public communication. In cities that have made comparable sustainability pledges, any of these scenarios would typically trigger formal disclosure, public consultation, or at minimum a posted notice. None was observed at Palm Jumeirah's Ittihad Park.
<h2>The COP28 Credibility Gap</h2>
The incident is symptomatic of a wider tension in Dubai's environmental narrative. The emirate has made substantial headline investments in sustainability — the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park, green building codes, mangrove restoration projects along the coastline. These are genuine programs, backed by real capital. But critics note that they coexist with development decisions that would face serious scrutiny in any city that had made comparable green pledges at a global climate conference.
The structural challenge is embedded in Dubai's model of urban governance. Large-scale development decisions are made rapidly, by design, in a system oriented toward agility and ambition rather than deliberation and public accountability. That same speed that has produced one of the world's most remarkable urban transformations in a generation also produces environmental decisions that arrive faster than oversight mechanisms can follow — if those mechanisms exist at all for decisions of this scale.
"The problem is not that Dubai lacks environmental ambition," said one Gulf-based urban sustainability researcher who asked not to be named. "The problem is that ambition expressed at COP28 needs to be visible in everyday decisions — including what happens to trees in a park when the cameras are not on. Transparency is not a luxury add-on to green governance. It is part of the definition."
Dubai Municipality has not issued any statement explaining the clearance, confirming whether replanting is planned, or providing a timeline for restoration of the affected park sections. Residents are calling for a public explanation, a replanting commitment, and the establishment of a transparent consultation process for future removal of mature trees from public green spaces.
Until that response comes, the stripped ground at Palm Jumeirah's Ittihad Park will stand as an uncomfortable counterpoint to the UAE's global sustainability narrative — a small but legible gap between the green ambitions announced in plenary halls and the decisions made quietly, without explanation, in the city's own parks.
