Mohammed Abdulmawjood

Director
The Engineering Association for Development & Environment-EADE
Iraq

Oct 29, 2021

Mohammed is a civil engineer and executive devoted to building the environmental foundation for peace in Iraq. His career started at the Iraqi Ministry of Housing and Construction, where he worked with many international NGOs to build and renovate more than 500 shelters for internally displaced people and refugees. He then brought three decades of experience in post-conflict engineering to found the Engineering Association for Development and Environment (EADE) in 2012 and has been directing the organization since. Mohammed’s path to this work began with a Bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and a Master’s in environmental engineering and industrial waste treatment from the University of Mosul in Iraq. He went on to earn his Ph.D. from the International Civilization Open University in Lebanon on environmental sustainability.

Mohammed’s experience with a wide range of engineering projects, from housing construction to industrial waste treatment, translates into a broad portfolio of EADE activities. Among many other initiatives, EADE: clears rubble, conducts environmental studies, plants trees, educates schoolchildren on sustainability, and even published an English to Arabic dictionary of environmental terms. And Mohammed has many more ideas for future projects: “We have so many more project plans ready to go … as soon as we receive international support,” he says. He points to the problem of debris from years of war and insurgency. “Military and terrorist operations have destroyed houses and public infrastructure, leaving in their wake massive amounts of debris that remain a problem across all of Iraq,” he explains. Efforts from the government and international organizations failed to meet the scale of the crisis, leading EADE to help clear and relocate debris. Mohammed also sees a role for EADE in reconstruction efforts, which he expects could be done more sustainably by recycling some of the less damaged materials. However, Iraqis are still waiting for government reimbursement—or international funds—to undertake construction.

The breadth and severity of Iraq’s peacebuilding needs results in conflicting pressures on EADE: resource shortage and portfolio expansion. EADE needs to understand the environmental problems at the same time as fixing them—and the list of environmental problems seems all-encompassing. A major issue in the country is how to effectively manage industrial waste, the subject of Mohammed’s dissertation. Iraq already faces severe water shortages, and the dumping of untreated water and solid waste into rivers makes much of the limited water available hazardous. “We urgently need data on what industrial chemicals are in our rivers,” says Mohammed. EADE previously published studies on which facilities dumped their waste into waters without treatment, and EADE is now working on an updated version. “We also don’t know how much the water level is decreasing,” says Mohammed. So, at the same time as implementing programs designed to reduce waste, EADE is conducting research and building local capacity to undertake further research. The organization works with Iraqi engineering students and trains them in collecting environmental data and developing studies. EADE’s data is now some of the best available on the environment of Iraq, submitted to the United Nations and presented at international conferences.

It is hard not to be moved by Mohammed’s relentless determination and EADE’s myriad parallel initiatives in the face of a profoundly bleak situation. Ultimately, Mohammed’s work brings not only an engineer’s perspective to the environmental peacebuilding community, but also a sobering sense of purpose.