[CPEO-MEF] GLOBAL: "The environmental costs of the escalating Middle East crisis"

[Lenny Siegel <LSiegel@cpeo.org>]

The environmental costs of the escalating Middle East crisis
Further escalation in the Middle East will bring further environmental degradation, harming people and ecosystems.

Conflict and Environment Observatory
October 3, 2024

A year of escalating conflict across the Middle East has had a range of direct and reverberating consequences for the region’s environment. In this post we identify the current and emerging trends that are threatening human health and often fragile and degraded ecosystems.

Instability and environmental insecurity

Conflict and insecurity have long been an important driver of environmental degradation in Gaza and the West Bank, Lebanon, Israel and Yemen. Alongside the direct consequences of armed conflicts and military occupation, insecurity has undermined regional environmental cooperation, diverted spending and weakened environmental governance. In the 1980s, the Iran-Iraq war saw the intensive targeting of oil infrastructure and the region witnessed firsthand the environmental consequences of retaliatory attacks against industrial and energy facilities. More recently these have also been a hallmark of the conflicts in Iraq and Syria, which at the time of writing are being dragged deeper into the unfolding crisis. 

Across the region, conflict and security-linked environmental degradation is taking place in the shadow of a rapidly changing climate, which is exposing communities to a range of risks, threatening infrastructure and undermining livelihoods. Most exposed to environmental risks are the millions of people who have already been displaced by this latest conflict, and by those that have preceded it. And while it can be difficult to focus on the environment in the face of such profound human suffering, it is vital that we do so because the damage being wrought is threatening human health and eroding the ecosystem services that communities depend on.    

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For the entire article, see
https://ceobs.org/the-environmental-costs-of-the-escalating-middle-east-crisis/

—

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
A project of the Pacific Studies Center
LSiegel@cpeo.org
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650-961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org
Author: DISTURBING THE WAR: The Inside Story of the Movement to Get Stanford University out of Southeast Asia - 1965–1975 (See http://a3mreunion.org)

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