Ernst had always been wavering over the site for the new capital, but that was only natural. Moving the capital was, after all, a major national policy, and compared with the more developed east, the central region Ernst favored had seen far less development. At present, forest cover in the central region exceeded seventy percent, making the state of local construction easy to imagine.
Of course, this was not an East African statistic. The East African government currently had no time to survey the nation's forests. East Africa's forest coverage was extremely high; even west of the Somalia region, vast forests could be found. Now, the forestry resources of the Congo Basin accounted for more than half of all Africa's.
Naturally, East Africa's development had caused its forest area to shrink at a rapid pace. Yet Africa's forest resources had remained nearly untouched for thousands of years. Even if East Africa continued developing for decades or a century, it likely would not exhaust them. After all, while East Africa felled trees, it also planted and introduced fine tree species.
This was especially common in East African cities. East African cities generally attached great importance to greening, which stood in stark contrast to contemporary European cities. Thus, even Dar es Salaam had quite a few parks, roadside trees, and green belts.
The contrast was particularly obvious beside highly industrialized cities such as Berlin. Every inch of Berlin's downtown streets was worth its weight in gold, with little greenery to be seen. Aside from buildings and houses, the roadside held only lonely streetlamps.
This led Europeans who had stayed in Dar es Salaam and Mombasa to call the two cities "green cities." In truth, most East African cities used those two as their models, and their development was broadly similar. It was