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Good practice Imported

Dushanbe's Urban Greening Drive — Record Tree Numbers, a Costly Import, and an EBRD Green City Plan (Tajikistan)

Tajikistan · Dushanbe · See the Tajikistan profile · See the Dushanbe profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 89% 27/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Dushanbe reports 3.29 million trees planted since 2009 (12 sqm green space/resident) and an EBRD Green City Plan targeting ~140,000 t CO2/yr, but a 2017 purchase of 3,000 mature trees flown in from Belgium for 22 million somoni drew criticism as costly and ecologically mismatched

3,291,623
Trees planted since 2009 (2009-2026)
12 sqm/resident
Green space per resident
255 EUR million
GCAP estimated investment need
140,000 tonnes/year
GCAP projected CO2 reduction
22 million somoni
Cost of imported mature trees from Belgium (2017)

Details

Maturity
Scaling
Promoter
Dushanbe Mayor's Office (Shahrdori Dushanbe), with the EBRD Green Cities Programme
Period
2009-2026
Keywords
urban forestry, municipal governance, procurement, climate mitigation

Context

Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, has run a sustained municipal tree-planting drive since 2009 and joined the EBRD Green Cities programme in 2012, adopting a Green City Action Plan (GCAP) in 2020 setting out 27 priority actions across transport, energy, water, waste and land use.

Activities

Officials report 3,291,623 trees planted by 2026, giving roughly 12 square metres of green space per resident. The GCAP is estimated to require about 255 million euro in investment. Community plantings, including 2,020 trees in Victory Park with UNDP and municipal support, added specific verifiable increments.

Results

The GCAP projects a cut of about 140,000 tonnes of CO2 per year and roughly 885 jobs in green infrastructure and urban services.

Conclusions

In 2017 the mayor's office imported 3,000 mature chestnut and sycamore trees from Belgium for 22 million somoni -- reportedly equivalent, per tree, to a month's pension for dozens of Tajik retirees -- and independent reporting later noted some imported trees struggled to adapt and were not producing seed, raising value-for-money and ecological-fit concerns alongside the otherwise large-scale planting effort.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Very high (> €5M) — GCAP estimated at EUR255M investment need; 2017 tree-import controversy cost 22M somoni for 3,000 trees.
Time to results
Long (> 3 years) — Planting drive since 2009; GCAP adopted 2020 with implementation ongoing to 2026 and beyond.
Staffing & skills
Dushanbe Mayor's Office (Shahrdori Dushanbe), EBRD Green Cities Programme technical assistance, UNDP Tajikistan (Victory Park component)

Conditions for success

  • sustained multi-year municipal planting commitment
  • donor co-financing (Switzerland, Aga Khan Development Network) for specific plantings

Common failure modes

  • high-cost imported mature trees can struggle to adapt to local conditions and represent poor value for money versus locally sourced stock
  • no independently verified survival rate for the headline planting total

Where it fits

Governance type
municipal government with international donor support (EBRD)
Scale
city-wide (Dushanbe)
Income level
low income (Tajikistan)

Commonly funded by

LIFE Programme National / regional programmes

Indicative funding routes for practices of this type — always check each programme's current calls and eligibility rules.

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

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