By IPS Correspondents
CASABLANCA, Morocco, Dec 31 2005 (IPS)

If they have it their way, Casablanca will be green again. Because now this commercial hub of Morocco is a polluted city, and what were once its famous green parks, refuse dumps.

The World Health Organisation thinks there must be at least 10 square metres of green space per inhabitant in a city. Casablanca has one square metre, if that.

It once had 165 hectares of parks, created during the days of the French protectorate. Like the 18-hectare Hermitage Park created from 1917 to 1927. Over recent years this has become the place for muggings and rapes, and home to drunkards and tramps.

The Arab League park as it is now called was designed by French architect Albert Laprade in 1919. Its famous date palms remain a distinguishing feature across its 28 hectares. But they stand now among weeds and bramble.

The Murdoch park is a refuse dump. It is difficult to enter the park without being in a hurry to leave.

But finally the city is waking up to what it has done to its parks. The Arab League park has been adopted by the independent Mohamed VI Foundation For the Environment. The group is renovating the park under a ‘Cities in Bloom’ programme.

This group has also undertaken revival of the Hermitage Park. The park should come back to life by the summer of 2006, members of the foundation say.

The re-greening of Casablanca is being supported by a twinning agreement with Chicago. An official of the Green Spaces Division of the Casablanca administration visited Chicago in September to promote park development programmes jointly.

The city administration and supporting non-governmental organisations plan to plant a million trees in Casablanca over the next three years. More than 200,000 trees have already been planted.

But not every resident is satisfied with such measures. “There simply is no green space left in many parts of the city,” a resident said. “We can never breathe fresh air. The damage done can never be repaired.” The poorest districts of the city continue to get more and more polluted.

“My children will suffer most because of the damage caused to Casablanca’s environment,” says Abdellah Benjdi, 33. “People who are given the responsibility to protect the environment have no environmental sense.”

Green spaces are being provided only in new housing areas, he said. But there too, they disappear soon after the houses are sold because they get built over.

Independent groups are limited in their reach due to lack of resources, and because “municipalities do not participate in the awareness process about environment and green space,” Mustafa Laaraari, environmentalist and president of the Aljamour association for environment protection told IPS.

Planting a few million trees in Casablanca “would not be enough to solve the environmental problem of the city,” he said. “We need awareness campaigns and workshops about the environment. What would be the use of trees if we do not protect them?”

Pollution is also threatening the Bouskoura forest near the city. Considered by ecologists the “green lung” of Casablanca, the forest is slowly being destroyed by polluting industries forced to move out of the Aïn Sebâa region inside Casablanca..

Plastic bags and beer cans are strewn around what is left of the forest. Other forests too are threatened. Morocco has nine million hectares of natural forest with 4,700 plant species and more than 500 vertebrate species. Forests cover 13 percent of the land area.

The biggest threat are the polluting cities, and of these Casablanca is by far the largest. It releases about 480,000 cubic metres of wastewater everyday through 26 outlets, of which 18 open into the Atlantic ocean. The city releases 3,200 tonnes of household and industrial refuse per day.

Pollution within Casablanca affects four million residents, 12 percent of the population. And this population is suffering the consequences already.

“There are more and more respiratory infections, cases of repetitive bronchitis, serious asthma attacks, and ENT (ear, nose and throat) problems,” Prof Mohamed Bougrine, a a specialist in paediatrics, told the daily newspaper L’Economiste. “In summer and winter, the peak period of pollution, we notice an exacerbation of asthma attacks. Health problems are increasing and often result in hospitalisation and even in death.”

At root the fault lies with “the urban planning policy which has not kept pace with the demographic evolution as well as the growth of traffic,” environmentalist Jamal Eddine Lazrag told IPS.

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