Environmentalist Karine Danielyan, who heads the “For Sustainable Human Development” NGO, thinks that on the example of Yerevan one can learn how not to implement urban construction. According to Danielyan, “Armenian oligarchs build where they want, without considering any environmental norm.”

The environmentalist remembers the Yerevan master plan of the Soviet times “when the environmental science was not so much developed”, but all master plans had ecological directions.


“Yerevan used to have a green network that one could go from one place to another using only green space,” says Danielyan.

In recent years Armenian environmentalists have constantly warned authorities in charge of the sphere about the risk of desertification faced by Yerevan, as sweeping construction has been implemented in the city at the expense of green zones. (According to environmentalists, desertification threatens 80 percent of Armenia’s territory; forests now make only eight percent of the country’s territory. It is estimated that if desertification continues for another 20 years, Armenia will lose almost all of its forests and woods.)

Danielyan believes that first the population of Armenia did not need such large-scale construction, as most complete elite housing remains unlived-in.

“Even if there were that need, this construction could have been carried out in areas adjacent to Yerevan,” says Danielyan.

In recent years the average air temperature in Yerevan has risen by 0.7 degrees. Danielyan links it to the logging of trees on the hillsides surrounding Yerevan, which used to give some coolness to the capital city during hot summers.

“Now the city doesn’t have enough time to cool down overnight,” says Danielyan.

She brings the examples of the cities of Edinburgh and Bordeaux, in Scotland and France respectively, where the centers once, too, lost their green areas due to unsparing construction.

“Edinburgh had to blow up the city center, then plant trees and other greenery, because people were running away from there. The same situation was also Bordeaux,” says the environmentalist, warning that the same situation threatens Yerevan as well.