BEIRUT — On the banks of the sour-smelling Beirut River, a group of environmentalists and locals cleared a plot of land for an ambitious project to create a forest in Lebanon’s capital.

The Sin el Fil district's new urban forest is the product of an intensive workshop held from May 24 to 29. A new crowdfunding application called SUGi was launched the same day as the workshop to gather support for the urban forest and other environmental projects.

The project was run by the Lebanese architecture and environmental organization TheOtherDada, in collaboration with the India-based social enterprise Afforestt. Established in 2011, Afforestt has assisted in establishing hundreds of self-sustaining forests around the world, using a method created by Japanese biologist Akira Miyawaki. It seeks to make forests into what they would have been had it not been for human interference through planting a wide variety of native flora in a compact space.

The most striking thing about these forests is their density, with four trees per square meter and closely packed bushes making the area almost impassible after a few years of growth.