The Mayor of Freetown has raised concern over what she described as growing encroachment and sale of land designated for tree planting, warning that the city’s flagship environmental programme is under threat despite significant progress in recent years. Speaking in a radio interview, the mayor said the Freetown City Council has planted about 1.2 million trees across the capital, including in schools, cemeteries and along major roads. However, she accused some community stakeholders and forest guards of selling or reallocating land where trees have already been planted, undermining conservation efforts and reversing gains made under the city’s climate programme.
The tree planting effort is part of the council’s broader “Freetown the Treetown” initiative, launched in 2020 to restore degraded forest cover and strengthen climate resilience in the city. The project initially targeted one million trees by 2022 and has since expanded, with plans to plant five million trees by 2030 and up to 20 million by 2050. The programme also introduced digital tracking to monitor tree growth and survival, with early data showing survival rates of over 80 percent for planted trees.
The initiative was developed in response to decades of deforestation in and around Freetown. Estimates suggest that about 70 percent of the city’s trees have been lost due to rapid urbanisation, logging and land clearing. This loss has had direct consequences. In 2017, severe flooding and landslides linked to environmental degradation killed more than 1,000 people, highlighting the role of forest cover in stabilising slopes and managing water runoff.
Tree planting is widely seen as a key part of the city’s climate strategy. According to the United Nations, restoring forest cover in Freetown is expected to reduce flood risk, limit coastal erosion, improve air quality and absorb carbon emissions. Urban trees also help regulate temperature in densely populated areas, where heat levels have been rising in recent years due to deforestation and expanding informal settlements.
Despite these benefits, the mayor warned that ongoing deforestation is eroding the impact of the council’s work. Data from recent environmental assessments indicate that tree loss in the Western Area continues at a pace that rivals or exceeds new planting. In some areas, hundreds of hectares of forest are cleared each year, often for construction or informal land sales.
This pattern has direct implications for newly planted trees. When surrounding vegetation is cleared, young trees become more vulnerable to soil erosion, heat stress and human interference. Encroachment can also lead to the uprooting or destruction of saplings before they reach maturity, reducing survival rates and weakening the long-term impact of the programme.
The mayor’s remarks point to a governance challenge as much as an environmental one. While the Freetown City Council is responsible for managing public spaces and environmental programmes in the city, enforcement often depends on cooperation from local communities and other actors. Allegations that some of those tasked with protecting tree sites are instead facilitating land sales suggest gaps in oversight and accountability.Environmental analysts say that without stronger enforcement and community engagement, large-scale tree planting programmes risk becoming symbolic rather than transformative. The effectiveness of such initiatives depends not only on the number of trees planted but also on their survival over time and the protection of surrounding ecosystems.
For Freetown, the stakes remain high. The city’s geography-a coastal urban centre backed by steep hills-makes it particularly vulnerable to flooding and landslides when vegetation is removed. Reversing deforestation trends is therefore central to both environmental protection and public safety.
The mayor’s warning underscores a broader tension facing fast-growing cities: balancing development pressures with environmental sustainability. In Freetown, where land demand continues to rise, that balance is proving difficult to maintain.
Source: Sulaiman Stom Koroma
