Environmental Issues in Areas Retaken from ISIL: Mosul, Iraq
Publisher: UN Environment
Date: 2017
Topics: Assessment, Extractive Resources, Renewable Resources, Weapons, Waste, and Pollution
Countries: Iraq
During his visit to Iraq in May 2017, Erik Solheim responded positively to the government’s request for support in conducting an assessment of the environmental impacts in areas formerly occupied by ISIL (so-called Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, alias Daesh). The Head of UN Environment witnessed first-hand the devastating environmental impacts affecting the inhabitants of Qayarrah town, 60 kilometres south of Mosul, from oil wells deliberately set on fire. ISIL’s scorched earth tactics provide a dramatic illustration of how pollution from conflicts and deliberate sabotage and looting of industrial facilities and civil infrastructure can affect people’s health and livelihoods for decades, and impede reconstruction and peacebuilding efforts.
Two weeks after the Iraqi Government declared the liberation of Mosul on 9 July 2017, UN Environment deployed staff to Iraq to design and plan with the Environment Ministry an environmental assessment of the city and surrounding areas. Iraq’s second or third largest city (estimates vary) with a pre-conflict population of around 1.4 million people, Mosul is today at the centre of one of the world’s largest and most complex humanitarian operations with over one million displaced persons. An important commercial and industrial hub, Mosul is also where environmental impacts are considered to be of greatest concern given the high level of infrastructure destruction, the large number of hazardous sources, and the potential size of the exposed population.
UN Environment’s reconnaissance assessment of the environmental impacts in areas retaken from ISIL is carried out in close coordination with and support from the UN System in Iraq. This work is also embedded within the UN Recovery and Resilience Programme for conflict affected areas currently being developed by the UN at the request of the Iraqi government, which will be presented in the upcoming Kuwait donor conference.