The carbon footprint from Israel’s war on Gaza will exceed the emissions of around 100 countries, according to new research.
A study published by the Social Science Research Network, first reported by The Guardian on Friday, found that the climate cost of Israel’s destruction of the Palestinian enclave, clearing debris and rebuilding the territory could exceed 31m tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.
That is more than the annual 2023 emissions of many countries, including Costa Rica, Afghanistan and Zimbabwe.
The study found that Hamas’ rockets and bunker fuel made up for 0.2 percent of those emissions, while the supply and use of weapons, tanks and other ordnance by Israel made up 50 percent.
It found that the overall impact of Israel’s wars on Gaza and Lebanon, as well as its recent military confrontations with Yemen and Iran, was equivalent to running 84 gas power plants for a year.
It is the third such study looking into the climate cost of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.
“This report is a staggering and sobering reminder of the ecological and environmental cost of Israel’s genocidal campaign on the planet and its besieged people,” Zena Agha, policy analyst for Palestinian policy network Al-Shabaka, told The Guardian.
“But this is also the US, UK and EU’s war, all of which have provided seemingly limitless military resources to enable Israel to devastate the most densely populated place on the planet.”
The research found that 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions since the war began came from the US sending 50,000 tonnes of weapons and supplies to Israel.
A further 20 percent was attributed to Israeli aircraft reconnaissance and bombing campaigns, as well as fuel from tanks and other military vehicles.
Around 7 percent of emissions from the conflict were from diesel-guzzling generators in Gaza, which Palestinians rely on due to Israel’s blockade and the destruction of solar panels and the enclave’s only power plant.
Before the war, solar energy made up a quarter of Gaza’s electricity – one of the highest densities of rooftop solar panels in the world. Israeli forces have destroyed large swathes of that solar infrastructure.
The most significant cost to the climate will come from the reconstruction of Gaza, the study finds.
Rebuilding 436,000 apartments, along with hundreds of schools, mosques, clinics and other buildings – in addition to 5km of roads – will produce 29.4m tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.
Underestimate
The research used open-source data, media reports, and data from aid groups and UN agencies.
The actual climate cost of Israel’s war is likely to be much higher than the estimates, due to Israel’s media blockade masking the full extent of environmental damage to the enclave.
“This conflict in Gaza shows that the numbers are substantial, greater than the entire greenhouse gas emissions of many entire countries, and must be included for accurate climate change and mitigation targets,” said Frederick Otu-Larbi, co-author of the report and lecturer at the University of Energy and Natural Resources in Ghana.
Currently, there is no obligation for states to report military emissions to the UN’s climate body.
The UN last year said that Israel’s war had created a devastating environmental crisis in Gaza, destroying sanitation systems, leaving tonnes of debris from explosive devices and causing major pollution.
It found that water, sanitation and hygiene systems in Gaza were almost entirely defunct, with the strip’s five wastewater treatment plants shut down.
Israel’s war is exacerbating an already deteriorating environment in Gaza, where over 92 percent of the water was deemed unfit for human consumption in 2020.
Climate change and Israel’s attacks on environmental infrastructure have long plagued Gaza and other parts of occupied Palestine.
After the Nakba – the ethnic cleansing and destruction of Palestinian communities in 1948 by Zionist forces – the Jewish National Fund (JNF) planted monoculture forests of pine trees, often on the ruins of Palestinian villages.
The Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel revealed in 2013 that the JNF’s projects had a devastating impact on local biodiversity.
In 2021, Fadel al-Jadba, director of the horticulture department at the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture, told Middle East Eye that there had been a noticeable decline in agricultural production over the past decade.
Source: MEE
