The hidden cost of Israel-Gaza war takes toll on climate change

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While the global community focuses on reducing carbon emissions from industries and nations, Israel's year-long assault on Gaza, and more recently Lebanon, has highlighted a largely ignored source of pollution – military emissions.

Since October 7, 2023, when the Hamas militant group launched a surprise attack on Israel, a year-long relentless bombardment on regional land and cities by Israel has followed. Beyond the immediate humanitarian toll, the environmental impact is staggering.

Gaza, an already environmentally vulnerable enclave, has suffered infrastructure collapse under the weight of both war and long-standing challenges such as overpopulation, economic blockade, and mismanagement.

But now, the destruction caused by Israeli air strikes, combined with the emissions generated from military activities, is deepening the environmental crisis – not just for Gaza, but for the world.

“The environmental impacts of the war in Gaza are unprecedented,” according to a preliminary report by the United Nations Environment Programme in June. The large-scale use of military weapons has created significant climate damage that is exponentially higher than other conflicts.

What are military emissions?

Military forces release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere through their activities, from everyday operations to wartime conflicts. These gases contribute to climate change, but their environmental impact is frequently ignored or excluded from climate regulations.

The world’s militaries are responsible for more than 5.5 per cent of global emissions, and if considered as a country, they would have the fourth-largest national carbon footprint in the world – greater than that of Russia, the Conflict and Environment Observatory said in a 2022 report.

This is based on data global militaries reveal willingly, yet the true scale is likely to be higher.

That creates a significant emissions gap in the scenarios based on Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), potentially widening the divide between the world’s most hopeful climate projections and the reality that lies ahead.

Each party to the Paris Agreement is required to establish an NDC and update it every five years.

The landmark climate deal, which was signed by hundreds of countries in 2015, aims to strengthen the global response to climate change by keeping temperature rise well below 2°C this century, with efforts to limit it to 1.5°C.

The US successfully lobbied to exclude military emissions from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which established binding emissions reduction goals for participating countries. While the Paris Agreement reversed this exemption, it did not make reporting of military emissions mandatory.

“Despite all the scenarios that are emerging regarding the climate crisis, we have information that’s hidden from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, so we are not getting the full picture,” a Palestinian environmental official told The National.

“It's not only one war, it's not one military action,” said Hadeel Ikhmais, head of the climate change office at the Palestinian Environmental Quality Authority (EQA).

This includes military weapons production and sales to Israel, which accounted for 3.6 per cent of all US arms exports from 2019 to 2023, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

The US, which grants Israel $3.8 billion in military aid each year, authorised a $20 billion deal for fighter jets and other military hardware to Israel in August this year.

Ms Ikhmais said that the US military's emissions extend beyond wartime activities, encompassing the entire life cycle of weapons and equipment, from production to sale, all of which contribute significantly to emissions.

The US military estimates it released about 51 million tonnes of greenhouse gases in 2021, which is roughly the same amount that Sweden produces each year.

Situation in Gaza

A study conducted in June by Queen Mary University in London revealed that emissions from the first 120 days of the Gaza conflict exceeded the annual emissions of 26 countries and territories.

When accounting for war infrastructure built by both Israel and Hamas, the total emissions exceeded those of 36 countries and territories.

The report analysed the direct emissions caused by the production of bombs and other munitions, as well as some indirect emissions related to their use. This included emissions from hundreds of Israeli air strikes, flights, tanks, and vehicles.

The reconstruction of Gaza will generate total emissions exceeding the annual emissions of more than 135 countries, making it comparable to the emissions of Sweden and Portugal, the report said.

In a “highly optimistic” scenario, it would take three years to rebuild Gaza, assuming all necessary resources – such as financial assets and tools – are provided without any obstacles, Ms Ikhmais said.

“The rubble itself may require three years to clear,” she added.

The destruction of buildings and roads has created a huge amount of debris, estimated at more than 39 million tonnes by May 2024. This is 13 times more than the total debris from all previous conflicts in Gaza since 2008, the UNEP said.

The amount of debris from the conflict in Gaza is more than five times greater than the debris produced during the 2017 ISIS conflict in Mosul, where a major offensive was launched by Iraqi security forces and coalition allies to retake the city, the UN agency added.

Dust and particles from debris may lead to respiratory illness, particularly for vulnerable groups. Additionally, hazardous substances such as asbestos, chemicals, or biological waste could be present in the rubble, contributing to environmental contamination.

In Ukraine, which is in a prolonged conflict with Russia, the UN took early steps to clear debris and even set up a debris recycling station in Bucha, where more than 400 people were killed during a month-long Russian occupation in 2022.

“Work to remove conflict-related debris, address contamination, and restore water, sanitation and solid waste management systems [in Gaza] must begin as soon as possible, to avoid further and long-lasting damage to the environment and people,” the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) told The National.

“UNEP is working with partners to incorporate environmental dimensions into planning for response and recovery.”

Ms Ikhmais said that many UN agencies have been directing their efforts and communication towards EQA and officials in the West Bank, particularly in Ramallah, because they are unable to establish contact with Gaza.

The Palestinian Authority, the governing body in West Bank, operates from Ramallah.

The World Bank, too, wants to collaborate on assessing the environmental damage, but this can only happen after a ceasefire is reached and reports are initiated postwar, the official said.

“We are almost a year [into the war] now, and there’s nothing on the horizon … on the contrary, it is expanding to the region,” Ms Ikhmais said.

The official also spoke about the challenges of collecting data.

“There was a project sponsored by the Green Climate Fund to support water banking and the use of renewable energy to irrigate crops in northern Gaza. Until this moment, we don’t know anything about this facility, whether it has suffered massive or partial destruction,” Ms Ikhmais said.

“If we can't have any information on this project, imagine if we want more expansive information about soil quality, soil quantity, water quality, and water quantity. Yes, the lack of data is an issue, but we can find some sort of estimation regarding the extent of the disaster that is happening on the ground,” she added.

Water crisis deepens

The breakdown of Gaza’s water systems threatens to prolong a social and public health disaster, even if the conflict subsides.

Before being disrupted by Israeli attacks, about 90 per cent of Gaza's water supply came from the Coastal Aquifer, which runs along the eastern Mediterranean coast from Egypt to Israel, while the remaining 10 per cent was sourced from Israeli pipelines and small-scale desalination plants.

Earlier in March, the World Bank reported that about 57 per cent of the region’s water infrastructure had been either destroyed or partially damaged, leading to a loss of more than $503 million.

People have been forced to move or seek refuge in other areas to find clean water, as their current location lacks adequate resources, Ms Ikhmais said, adding that the quality of the available water is also questionable, as there are no facilities to treat it with chlorine or other alternatives.

In July, The National reported that more than 130 million gallons of clean drinking water had been delivered to the Gaza Strip by a network of desalination plants established by the UAE in December.

The six plants, on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border, produce about 1.6 million gallons of water daily and have the capacity to serve up to 600,000 Palestinians.

Meanwhile, the damaged sanitation infrastructure in Gaza has worsened the water crisis, with untreated wastewater and sewage overflowing into the streets and the Mediterranean Sea. In 2020, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) reported that 26 per cent of childhood diseases in Gaza were water-related.

Five of Gaza’s major wastewater plants have been “completely destroyed” along with small facilities in neighbourhoods and villages, Ms Ikhmais said.

“Waste management has stopped [and] there are millions of tonnes of waste accumulating, and people are resorting to using this waste to burn because they are out of gas,” she added.

Even before the war, Gaza struggled with waste management, producing around 1,700 tonnes of waste each day with only two main landfills, according to UN data.

Energy supplies from the Gaza power plant and imports from Israel ceased immediately after the conflict began last year.

It has significantly impacted health care, water treatment, and daily life in the Gaza Strip, particularly in urban areas like Gaza City and northern Gaza. The conflict has also severely damaged the electricity grid and off-grid rooftop solar systems in public buildings across the region, including schools, hospitals, water facilities, and residential areas.

An estimated 510km of the electricity distribution network has been destroyed or damaged as of March 2024, the World Bank said in a report this year.

Environment takes a backseat

Gaza’s environmental issues mirror challenges faced by other Middle Eastern countries, such as water scarcity, desertification, air pollution, and soaring temperatures.

Countries such as Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt have not contributed much to global emissions but are still paying the price for the effects of climate change, Ms Ikhmais said.

Palestine is evaluating the financial resources required to address the climate crisis, but such efforts are complicated by the geopolitical situation.

“We are in the middle of two wars in the region: the invasion of climate change and its impacts, as well as the ongoing wars and political and geopolitical situations,” Ms Ikhmais said.

“Climate change is complicating the political issue [and] the political issue is complicated by climate change, so we are now in a vicious circle that we are trying to find some solutions to,” she added.

Two years ago, Palestine was recognised as one of “the climate champions” and was working with local and international partners to boost its climate initiatives, the official said.

“We are now a country living under war. So, what are we going to do? Are we going to focus on serving people in the short term by providing shelters, food, and water, or are we going to fight against the climate crisis that is going to hit us sooner or later?”