Iraq’s Environment Destroyed by War

Stephanie Adams
Oct. 24^th 2008 4:30 p.m.

The War in Iraq has taken a toll on their environment and will need years and years of work to be repaired. Much of the damaged was caused when factories were destroyed from bombings and the tearing down forests to keep the rebels from being able to hide from U.S. forces. There is contaminated sewage waste, trash from explosions and useless mines and bombs lying around.

Efforts have been made to clean up the environment but progress is slow. The United Nations Environment Program has helped to find the sites in Iraq that need the most help. The Iraq Environment Ministry has planted at least 17 million trees this year and with help from the Japanese, they have re-flooded around 55 percent of Iraq’s southern marshes. The marshes were drained by Saddam Hussein in efforts to make it easier to secure the Iraq border with Iran.

Nermeen Othman, head of the Iraqi Environmental Ministry, has expressed that the damage is actually worse than it sounds and has already increased the rates of cancer and infectious diseases in Iraq. One of the sites recently cleaned up was the Qadisiya chemical factory which was bombed in 2003 and left the surrounding area covered in toxic residues. The damaged sewage system has caused the contamination of 60 percent of Iraq’s fresh water. Othman expects the costs of repairs of the polluted sites to be billions of dollars. The idea that war causes such affects on the environment is one that should be obvious but is easily neglected. Othman projects the process of repair to take centuries.

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