Updates: polution; hunting; animal slaughter; climate change

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From mountain to mountain:

A veteran Peshmerga's battle against hunters

After a career in the Kurdistan Region’s security forces that spanned more than three decades, Jalal Sheikh Karim retired in 2019 and dedicated his life to protecting the wildlife from poachers and hunters.

Karim, 68, is a veteran Kurdish Peshmerga soldier who fought multiple conflicts against the former Baath regime in the mountains of the Kurdistan Region in the 1980s and 1990s.

He has returned to the mountains, not as a soldier, but to protect the wildlife from hunters and to prevent trees from being cut down in Sulaimani's province's Qaradagh area.

“I spend most of my time on this mountain," Karim said. “I am proud of what I have done."

“The number of wild animals has never been as many as they are recently, thanks to our well-organized work for the protection of this region,” he added.

He called on people to protect the environment just as they would their own home or children.

“At the end of the day, the nature of Kurdistan becomes beautiful,” he said. “This beauty, this clean environment is for them [the people].”

Between 2008 and 2010, the KRG introduced environmental protection laws, including some related to hunting, in order to protect the region's wildlife and nature.

The Sulaimani Forest and Environment Police say tough fines are levied on any poachers killing or poaching wild animals, including the rare Persian leopard. Fines range from 100,000 Iraqi dinars (around $85) to 10,000,000 Iraqi dinars (around $8,000), according to regulations issued by the Protection and Improvement section of the Kurdistan Environment Board.

Link to Article - Video:

https://www.rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/240420212

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Halgurd-Sakran

National park and battleground

Crystal clear, ice cold water rushes through a narrow gorge, tumbling over rocks and under a rickety bridge. Cliffs tower overhead, the rock face of one side leaning in towards its sibling across the stream. This is the Valley of Two Brothers in Halgurd-Sakran National Park. According to local legend, the two cliffs were once so close to each other that people could reach out and pass things across the chasm.

On a sparkling sunny day in February, the sound of the water and the occasional song of a bird are hushed under a shroud of newly-fallen snow. But don’t let the tranquility fool you.

“We are in conflict,” said park manager Bakhtyar Bahjat.

Halgurd-Sakran National Park was the dream of one man who used his charm, will-power, and connections to make it a reality. But he died before all of the paperwork was done and, without his driving force, the park is floundering, victim to a governance system of personalities rather than institutions, where party loyalty is valued over expertise. Egos and interests vie for control while the environment hangs in the balance, as does the well-being of those who want to protect it.

It is a park in two halves that cradle the town of Choman in eastern Erbil province, along the border with Iran. The northern half is dominated by Mount Halgurd, the tallest in Iraq at 3,607 metres, and the southern half, Sakran, is bordered by the Qandil Mountains.

Fellaw Pond is a popular spot, attracting visitors to its clear waters and stunning vistas. But some people came with off-road vehicles, tearing up the ground with their 4x4s. To stop this, two years ago the authorities dug a trench between the road and the pond. Soon afterwards, Salar Chomany, a local mountain guide, was visiting Fellaw where he saw a group of off-road drivers who had somehow managed to cross the trench and were circling the pond.

“I went up to them and asked how they did this,” Chomany recalled. The men ignored him, but a fight broke out between the drivers and residents of a nearby village who were unhappy with the heavy cars destroying the delicate plant life. Chomany said he was not involved in the brawl, yet one of the drivers filed a lawsuit against him.

The court case was resolved with the charges dropped, but Chomany said the drivers and their relatives, who are from the Choman area, continued to threaten him. He moved away for a while, going to work in Duhok.

On the evening of February 1 this year, Chomany was walking with his wife in Choman’s market when he says he was confronted by a group of the off-road drivers. He said one beat him over the head with a stick, knocking him unconscious. On the ground, the men reportedly continued to hit and kick him while his wife screamed for help. Chomany woke up a few hours later in hospital.

The alleged attackers are now out on bail, awaiting trial, while Chomany and his wife live in fear. He says he is exposed because he has no influential friends or political allegiances to protect him.

“I’m an environmentalist. I’m a mountaineer. I encourage people to protect the environment. I’m an activist. I have many times called on local authorities to support campaigns to protect the environment. But without party membership, I have no backing,” he said.

Halgurd-Sakran park was the brainchild of Abdulwahid Gwani, former mayor of Choman, who in 2010 brought in experts from Austria to start carving a national park out of the land surrounding his hometown. He secured a funding pledge of $12 million from the government, built a visitor centre, and hired park rangers.

He championed a 2011 regulation from the Council of Ministers that dictated the establishment of a committee made up of representatives from the ministries of agriculture, finance, and interior, the environment board, and environmental experts who would manage the park.

But work ground to a halt in 2014, when a trifecta of world events drew attention and resources away from the park. The Islamic State group (ISIS) swept across parts of Syria and Iraq, and threatened the borders of the Kurdistan Region. Kurdish forces, including the park rangers and mine clearers, were diverted to the war effort.

Then, the government’s revenues plummeted because of low oil prices and disputes with Baghdad. And in 2015, peace talks between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Turkish government collapsed, so Turkish warplanes and drones reappeared in the Kurdistan Region’s skies over the PKK’s Qandil headquarters.

ISIS has been territorially defeated, but the Kurdistan Region is still struggling to find secure financial footing, and the PKK-Turkey conflict continues to rage. In 2017, Gwani passed away, and his dream of a national park is now in limbo. The committee was never established and the park has no funds.

“It was an individual initiative,” explained Abdulrahman Sidiq, head of the Kurdistan Region’s environment board, about the Council of Ministers’ regulation to formalize the park. There are no problems or obstacles in the way of establishing the committee, but since Gwani’s death, “no one followed up on it,” he said.

Sidiq’s environment board is underfunded, and, as a board, lacks the power that a ministry would have. He said he has asked the government to set up the committee, but “This official request has gone unanswered.”

This is typical of governance and decision-making in the Kurdistan Region where most power lies outside of formal structures, according to Kamaran Palani, a lecturer at Erbil’s Salahaddin University and research fellow at the Middle East Research Institute (MERI).

“Oftentimes individuals fail to transform and translate their power and agency into the rules and institutions, so they can ensure sustainability and continuity,” he explained. When new people take over posts, they often ignore the work of their predecessors and their actions “won’t be guided by rules and organizations, in other words, institutions.”

Within institutions and ministries, rules can be circumvented and doors opened through a phone call, payment of a fee, or personal connections known as wasta. If the official answer to a request is no, a phone call to a shadowy figure at a ministry can remove the block, for a price.

“The first major step towards institutionalisation, that is to say ‘state-building,’ is to transform and translate the power and ability of powerful actors and individuals into the units, rules, organisations and institutions,” said Palani.

It’s a problem for the environment across the Kurdistan Region, not just in the park. “It is very difficult to say the KRG [Kurdistan Regional Government] has been supportive” of environmental efforts, wildlife conservation expert Hana Raza said in a talk in January.

“It’s more so individuals within the KRG are supportive,” she added, explaining that you may build up a good rapport with one person, but when someone new is appointed to that post, collaboration has to start at the beginning again.

Environmental organizations are also often stopped at provincial borders where one political party’s influence ends and another begins. Raza, who is based in Sulaimani and works for Nature Iraq and the Persian Leopard Conservation group, said she has been refused permission for many projects in Erbil and Duhok provinces. “Frankly, the collaboration ends at the borders of Sulaimani-Erbil,” she said.

Nature is not bound by borders, but work on it is, making the environment collateral damage in party squabbles.

With no one at the helm, no formal management or funds, Halgurd-Sakran National Park is at the mercy of a multitude of factors from poachers to private landowners and preservation of its unique environment cannot be enforced.

Halgurd-Sakran not only boasts the highest mountain peak, but also the highest lake in Iraq - Bekodyan sits at around 3,200 meters above sea level. The park has four distinct seasons, acres of forest, and ample freshwater in its mountain streams. A recent survey of flora in the park by the Kurdistan Botanical Foundation found about 1,500 to 1,700 plant species, many endemic to the area and some new discoveries.

In 2010, the United Nations set a target that 17 percent of land should be within preservation areas by the year 2020. Just 48 out of 196 nations are meeting or exceeding that goal, and new research says we should nearly double that to 30 percent if we want to maintain a stable climate. At the One Planet Summit in January, 52 nations committed to reaching that higher target by 2030, hoping more will get on board ahead of the next meeting under the UN biodiversity convention, scheduled for October.

Iraq is dismally behind in its obligations. Just a fraction of Iraqi land, 1.53 percent, is designated as protected, and that label does not mean the land is safeguarded. For example, most of Iraq’s remaining woodlands are within the Kurdistan Region, but, “As with many of the country’s urban parks and nature reserves, they’re suffering from insufficient protection, planning and investment,” the United Nations wrote in a February report.

One of the biggest threats to Kurdistan’s forests is fire, sparked by errant picnickers or bombs. According to a 2020 report from the Dutch organization PAX, about 23,000 acres of land within protected environmental zones was burned in 2020, the fires directly linked to Turkish military campaigns against the PKK.

The PKK is a mixed blessing for Kurdistan’s nature. They attract Turkish bombs, but they also control a large area of the park and are “protectors of the environment,” said park manager Bahjat. Cutting down trees and hunting are forbidden in PKK-controlled territory and the guerrillas are much more effective at enforcing these rules than the Kurdistan Region’s forces.

Lake Bekodyan lies within PKK-controlled territory and has only recently begun attracting visitors. Bahjat said he and his friends have sometimes been approached by PKK fighters when they visit the lake, but the guerrillas don’t come around much anymore. The lake has gained popularity, largely driven by social media posts from Bahjat and other Choman locals. He now estimates 1,000 people visit the lake every summer and the PKK appears to be tolerating it.

Iranian Kurdish armed groups like the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) and Komala are also present in the mountains along the border with Iran, occasionally drawing Iranian fire.

Landmines decades old are another environmental “protector.” The area was a frontline in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s and munitions still litter the parkland. Every year, people are maimed or killed by mines. One of the first things Gwani did when he conceived the park was bring in teams to clear landmines and, while some areas are now safe for visitors, other areas are strictly no-go zones.

The road into the Sakran half of the park is winding and potholed. Nearing the Iran border, small, red triangular signs start appearing on the roadside and in the distance, up the mountains. Skulls on the signs are grim warnings of the deadly mines lying beneath the soil. There are so many mines on Mount Girdamand that it is still too dangerous to retrieve the bodies of soldiers killed decades ago.

The landmines are preventing development – a good thing in the eyes of Bahjat. Without the landmines, politicians and investors who want to profit from the park without regard to protecting the environment “would invade,” he said.

Bahjat is not paid for his work. He spends his own money on small things like putting up information signs in the park, and says he’s often told he’s “silly” for doing so.

With no staff, it is impossible to police activities in the park. Foragers, hunters, poachers, and tree-fellers have free rein. In one day, I saw freshly cut logs lying by the side of the road for collection, dump trucks carting loads of sand out of the park, a poacher carrying bird cages under his arms, and heard the shot of a hunter’s rifle. Plastic bottles and empty cigarette packets litter the mountainsides.

There is also no control over tourism development in the park, so individuals who own land do their own thing to make money. They rent out their houses, build new houses to rent out, and build picnic spots for day trippers. There is no plan, no strategy, no overall management.

Small signs mark landmines laid during the 1980s Iran-Iraq war at the roadside in Halgurd-Sakran National Park on February 23, 2021. Photo: Hannah Lynch / Rudaw

The Kurdistan Region’s finances are in dire straits. The oil-dependent economy took a hit when crude prices plummeted last year during the coronavirus pandemic. Iraq, on the verge of bankruptcy, devalued the dinar. Deep-rooted disputes between Erbil and Baghdad over budgets and oil sales complicated the matter, and the federal government was not sending regular payments to the regional capital. The sum of it all was that Erbil was not able to pay its public sector workers on time or in full.

Choman felt the crunch, hard. The government is the largest employer here – home to many Peshmerga and border workers. An alternative source of income would be a boon for the area and the park could be the answer. But with no park management, no plan, no strategy, development is ad hoc, unregulated, and, in many cases, harmful.

There are more than 50 villages within the park boundaries, and 60 percent of the land is privately owned. In winter, many of the houses sit empty and resorts are boarded up against the cold, waiting for the busy summer season. Last summer, business was bad.

“Our business went down to zero last year because of corona. It was very bad,” said Ali Rasool, owner of Ene Resort.

He built his resort in 2017, borrowing money with the hope of tapping into a growing tourism trade. He still has not been able to repay the loan.

The global pandemic is not Rasool’s only problem. “We need good roads,” he said. “The government has not extended services to our area.”

Rasool built the road to his resort himself and set up all his own electricity – hooking into the national grid that provides power for about 12 hours a day, roughly from 4 pm to 4 am. Dozens of villages in the Halgurd-Sakran area used to have hydropower, generating electricity from the numerous rivers and streams. But around 2003, they began connecting up to the national grid, taking a backward step in terms of reliable electricity supply and clean energy.

To make his business a viable one, Rasool says he needs government investment – good roads, steady electricity supply, and development of tourism services. Right now there are no restaurants in the park, and accommodation is limited to renting out private homes. Resorts like Rasool’s cater to day visitors.

Without the government’s regulation on management of the park implemented, individual, unregulated efforts like Rasool’s are the only ones trying to develop the park as a tourist destination.

“The park has stopped for seven or eight years, because there is no law or regulation in place,” said Choman mayor Swara Ahmdi.

Ahmdi heads a local board to run the affairs of Halgurd-Sakran, a temporary measure that he says is working to “safeguard the national park.”

Coordinating with private landowners is the biggest problem his committee faces. Ahmdi said they have ordered locals not to build houses without the committee’s permission, and have banned tree cutting and sand mining. But, “We cannot forcibly stop people from building a house.” If the landowners turn to the law, “the law will support them because there are no regulations in place,” he said.

“The people are the rightful owners of this land.”

The committee is also focusing on looking for investors, foreign and local, to develop and build tourism infrastructure. But most people are scared away by the challenge of working in an area where basic services are lacking, the PKK is partly in control making it an active conflict zone, and the border with Iran is so close.

“Many investors have been discouraged by the atmosphere,” said Ahmdi.

Exactly how to build up the tourism industry is a matter of debate. Bahjar is worried that names that have been bandied about to manage the park have no experience in park management or understanding of environmental issues. He fears the national park will be lost.

“We know that, if we let them, we will just have a name. Nothing else. Because they know nothing about what a national park is. They think it’s just a tourism project,” he said. “The national park is meant to protect the area and its nature.”

https://www.rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/250420213

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Hungry birds eating crops

Although Hemin Shukir personally managed to dodge severe drought this year, most of his crops have been destroyed by hungry birds

"As you see, sparrows have entirely eaten up this crop," Shukir, a Kurdish farmer from the village of Yangija, south of Kirkuk, told Rudaw on Monday.

A lack of rainfall has led to severe drought across Iraq, forcing many farmers to leave their farmlands uncultivated, sending wild animals and birds desperate for food.

“There is a drought this year, which has damaged a lot of our land,” said farmer Edris Othman

Local authorities have already declared a drought.

“We are sending our report to the Ministry of Agriculture. We highlight the scale of damage our farmlands have seen, from fire, flash floods and other natural disasters, as well as bird attacks. The current bird attacks have damaged this year's crops,” said Zuhair Ali, head of Kirkuk’s Agriculture department.

Iraq is the world's fifth-most vulnerable nation to the effects of climate change, including water and food insecurity, according to the UN.

After years of conflict and mired in political and economic crises, it is also one of the least prepared to deal with the emergency.

https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/270420212

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Lowering water levels increases risk of diseases and pollution

The Turkish state’s decision to cut the Euphrates water supplies and reduce the river’s water level, increases problems in Northern and Eastern Syria. Agriculture and agriculture-related activities suffer greatly as does energy production. People’s health is also at great risk. Experts say that the water reduction causes various diseases and poisoning cases

As the dry season arrived the lowering of the Euphrates water level caused severe drought in the region and agricultural lands dried up. In parallel, people find it hard to get access to drinking water.

In the region it is difficult to reach clean drinking water and therefore people are at risk of contracting contagious diseases. According to the data released by Kobanê and Emel hospitals, 230 cases of poisoning caused by water have been registered since January this year.

However, this figure only shows the number of those who applied to the hospital. While the doctors say that there are many people who do not go to hospitals, they also draw attention to the scale of the danger. Should this situation continue there is a real risk of a new humanitarian crisis.

Internal Diseases Specialist Dr. Emar Mihemed told ANHA: "The decrease in water has affected the health of citizens badly. The reduced level of water gets polluted more quickly. It contains more bacteria. This causes internal diseases. Infection and diarrhoea cases are common. Undoubtedly, children are the most affected."

Warning that the danger will increase even more should the interruptions continue, Dr. Emar Mihemed called on international human rights organizations to take action.

According to an agreement signed between Turkey, Iraq and Syria in 1987, the water released to the flow rate should be 500 cubic meters per second, while the Turkish state has reduced the rate to less than 200 cubic meters.

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The world's first 'infinite' plastic

A new method of recycling can turn plastic back to oil

The way we normally recycle plastics is a downward spiral of waste and degraded materials, but there is another option – turning plastic back into the oil it was made from.

Some plastics that could be recycled end up in landfill because of poor facilities, or confusion about what is and isn't recyclable

Every year, more than 380 million tonnes of plastic is produced worldwide. That's about the same as 2,700,000 blue whales – more than 100 times the weight of the entire blue whale population. Just 16% of plastic waste is recycled to make new plastics, while 40% is sent to landfill, 25% to incineration and 19% is dumped.

Much of the plastic that could be recycled – such as polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which is used for bottles and other packaging – ends up in landfill. This is often due to confusion about kerbside recycling or contamination with food or other types of waste.

Other plastics – such as salad bags and other food containers – find their way to landfill because they are made up of a combination of different plastics that can't be easily split apart in a recycling plant. Litter dropped in the street and lightweight plastics left in landfill sites or illegally dumped can be carried by the wind or washed into rivers by the rain, ending up in the ocean.

Chemical recycling is an attempt to recycle the unrecyclable. Instead of a system where some plastics are rejected because they are the wrong colour or made of composites, chemical recycling could see all types of plastic fed into an "infinite" recycling system that unmake plastics back into oil, so they can then be used to make plastic again.

The way plastic is currently recycled is more of a downward spiral than an infinite loop. Plastics are usually recycled mechanically: they are sorted, cleaned, shredded, melted and remoulded. Each time plastic is recycled this way, its quality is degraded. When the plastic is melted, the polymer chains are partially broken down, decreasing its tensile strength and viscosity, making it harder to process. The new, lower grade plastic often becomes unsuitable for use in food packaging and most plastic can be recycled a very limited number of times before it is so degraded it becomes unusable.

The emerging industry of chemical recycling aims to avoid this problem by breaking plastic down into its chemical building blocks, which can then be used for fuels or to reincarnate new plastics.

The most versatile version of chemical recycling is "feedstock recycling". Also known as thermal conversion, feedstock recycling is any process that breaks polymers down into simpler molecules using heat.

The process is fairly simple – take a plastic drinks bottle. You put it out with your recycling for collection. It is taken, along with all the other waste, to a sorting facility. There, the rubbish is sorted, either mechanically or by hand, into different kinds of materials and different kinds of plastics.

Your bottle is washed, shredded and packed into a bale ready for transportation to the recycling centre – so far, the same as the conventional process. Then comes the chemical recycling: the plastic that formerly made up your bottle could be taken to a pyrolysis centre where it is melted down. Next it is fed into the pyrolysis reactor where it is heated to extreme temperatures. This process turns the plastic into a gas which is then cooled to condense into an oil-like liquid, and finally distilled into fractions that can be put to different purposes.

Chemical recycling begins the same way as ordinary mechanical recycling, with collecting and crushing plastics and taking them to a plant

Chemical recycling techniques are being trialled across the world. UK-based Recycling Technologies has developed a pyrolysis machine that turns hard-to-recycle plastic such as films, bags and laminated plastics into Plaxx. This liquid hydrocarbon feedstock can be used to make new virgin quality plastic. The first commercial-scale unit was installed in Perth in Scotland in 2020.

The firm Plastic Energy has two commercial-scale pyrolysis plants in Spain and plans to expand into France, the Netherlands and the UK. These plants transform hard-to-recycle plastic waste, such as confectionery wrappers, dry pet food pouches and breakfast cereal bags into substances called "tacoil". This feedstock can be used to make food-grade plastics.

In the US, the chemical company Ineos has become the first to use a technique called depolymerisation on a commercial scale to produce recycled polyethylene, which goes into carrier bags and shrink film. Ineos also has plans to build several new pyrolysis recycling plants.

In the UK, Mura Technology has begun construction of the world's first commercial-scale plant able to recycle all kinds of plastic. The plant can handle mixed plastic, coloured plastic, plastic of all composites, all stages of decay, even plastic contaminated with food or other kinds of waste.

Mura's "hydrothermal" technique is a type of feedstock recycling using water inside the reactor chamber to spread heat evenly throughout. Heated to extreme temperatures but pressurised to prevent evaporation, water becomes "supercritical" – not a solid, liquid, nor gas. It is this use of supercritical water, avoiding the need to heat the chambers from the outside, that Mura says makes the technique inherently scalable.

"If you heat the reactor from the outside, keeping an even temperature distribution is really hard. The bigger you go the harder it gets. It's a bit like cooking," explained Mura's chief executive, Steve Mahon. "It's hard to fry a big steak all the way through but if you boil it, it's easy to make sure it's cooked evenly all the way through."

A pilot plant has shown that the use of very hot, supercritical water can help chemical recycling scale-up to useful levels

The plastic waste arrives on site in bales – contaminated, multi-layer plastic such as flexible films and rigid trays that would otherwise have gone to incineration or energy-from-waste plants. The bales are fed into the front-end sorting facility to remove any inorganic contaminants such as glass, metal or grit. Organic contaminants such as food residue or soil are able to pass through the process. The plastic is then shredded and cleaned, before being mixed with supercritical water.

Once this high-pressure system is depressurised and the waste exits the reactors, the majority of liquid flashes off as vapour. This vapour is cooled in a distillation column and the condensed liquids are separated on a boiling range to produce four hydrocarbon liquids and oils: naphtha, distillate gas oil, heavy gas oil and heavy wax residue, akin to bitumen. These products are then shipped to the petrochemical industry.

As with other feedstock techniques, there is no down-cycling as the polymer bonds can be formed anew, meaning the plastics can be infinitely recycled. With a conversion rate of more than 99%, nearly all the plastic turns into a useful product.

Mahon said: "The hydrocarbon element of the feedstock will be converted into new, stable hydrocarbon products for use in the manufacture of new plastics and other chemicals." Even the "fillers" used in some plastics – such as chalk, colourants and plasticisers – aren't a problem. "These drop into our heaviest hydrocarbon product, heavy wax residue, which is a bitumen-type binder for use in the construction industry."

The hot, excess gases generated during the process will be used to heat the water, increasing its energy efficiency, and the plant will be powered by 40% renewable energy. "We want to use as much renewable energy as possible and will be seeking, wherever practical, to aim for 100%," says Mahon.

Mura's Teesside plant, due for completion in 2022, aims to process 80,000 tonnes of previously unrecyclable plastic waste every year, as a blueprint for a global rollout, with sites planned in Germany and the US. By 2025, the company plans to provide one million tonnes of recycling capacity in operation or development globally.

"[Our] recycling of waste plastic into virgin-equivalent feedstocks provides the ingredients to create 100% recycled plastics with no limit to the number of times the same material can be recycled – decoupling plastic production from fossil resource and entering plastic into a circular economy," says Mahon.

Scientists such as Sharon George, senior lecturer in environmental science at Keele University, have welcomed Mura's development. "This overcomes the quality challenge by 'unmaking' the plastic polymer to give us the raw chemical building blocks to start again," says George. "This is true circular recycling."

The plant that is being constructed at Teesside in the UK aims to process 80,000 tonnes of plastic waste every year

Yet in the past 30 years, chemical recycling has shown serious limits. It is energy-intensive, has faced technical challenges and proved difficult to scale up to industrial levels.

In 2020, a report by the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (Gaia), a group of organisations and individuals who promote social movements to reduce waste and pollution, concluded that chemical recycling is polluting, energy intensive and prone to technical failures. The report concluded that chemical recycling was not a viable solution to the plastic problem, especially at the pace and scale needed.

Additionally, if the end product of chemical recycling is an oil used for fuel then the process does not reduce the need for virgin plastic, and burning such fuels would release greenhouse gases just as ordinary fossil fuels do.

"Environmental NGOs are keeping a close eye on emerging recycling methods," says Paula Chin, sustainable materials specialist at the conservation organisation WWF. "These technologies are in their infancy and they are by no means the silver bullet solution to the plastic waste problem. We should focus on increasing resource efficiency as a way to minimise waste through greater reuse, refill and repair systems – not relying on recycling to be the saviour."

But Mura argues that their plant will fill a much-needed niche. "[Chemical] recycling is a new sector, but the scale at which it is developing, specifically for Mura, shows both the urgent need for new technology to tackle the rising problem of plastic waste and environmental leakage, and an opportunity to recycle a valuable ready-resource, which is currently going to waste," Mahon says.

Mura's process aims to complement existing mechanical processes and infrastructure, not compete with them, recycling materials that would otherwise go to landfill, incineration or into the environment. All the waste plastic they process will be made new plastics or other materials, none will be burnt for fuel.

Many chemical recycling plants in the past have gone bust, but Mura believes the supercritical water technique it uses will make it economically viable (Credit: Mura)

Mura hopes its use of supercritical water for efficient heat transfer will allow them to scale-up to industrial levels, lowering energy use and costs. It could be a crucial factor for success where others have failed.

One of the main reasons chemical recycling has failed to take off so far has been financial collapse. In a 2017 report, Gaia noted multiple projects that had failed, including the Thermoselect facility in Germany which lost more than $500m (£350m) over five years, the UK's Interserve which lost £70m ($100m) on various chemical recycling projects, and many other companies that faced bankruptcy.

Financial difficulty is something that has held back not just chemical recycling but all kinds of plastic recycling. "The economics do not stack up. Collecting, sorting and recycling packaging is simply more expensive than producing virgin packaging," says Sara Wingstrand, New Plastics Economy Project Manager at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

Wingstrand says the only path to "dedicated, ongoing and sufficient funding at scale" for recycling is through mandatory, fee-based Extended Producer Responsibility schemes. These would see all industries that introduce plastic contributing funding to collect and process their packaging after its use. "Without them, it is very unlikely recycling of packaging will ever scale to the extent required," says Wingstrand.

But Mahon believes a system like Mura's is another way to shift the balance sheets in favour of plastic recycling by producing an oil that can be sold at a profit. Mura has recently announced partnerships with the plastic manufacturers Dow and Igus GmbH, and the construction firm KBR.

"The interesting thing here is that Mura can find value in plastics that aren't usually economically viable to recycle mechanically," says Taylor Uekert, researcher at the Cambridge Creative Circular Plastics Centre, University of Cambridge.

Even with the ability to unmake all types of plastic so they can be reused again, it is unlikely to make all of the problems with plastic pollution go away. With so much ending up in landfill and the environment, plastic will continue doing what it was made to do – endure.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/2021 ... obal-en-GB

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400,000 homes built on protected rural land

The south will see the bulk of new builds because the government's formula assumes that more housing is needed in areas where prices are higher. The south also has fewer brownfield sites

More than 11,000 houses could be built in rural Cornwall alone, while Buckinghamshire will need to allow at least 10,000.

Meanwhile, 'red wall' constituencies will see less development because prices are cheaper.

The south will see the bulk of new builds because the government's formula assumes that more housing is needed in areas where prices are higher. The south also has fewer brownfield sites

The figures - uncovered by The Times by analysing publicly-available data - risk a backlash from Conservative back benches already concerned that planning reforms will alienate traditional supporters in the shires.

Tory rebels last year forced a u-turn over a 'mutant algorithm' that could have sparked a planning free-for-all in the shires.

In response an updated 'Standard Method was unveiled' in December. This considers housing targets, brownfield capacity and local house prices to come up with a number of homes that each local authority has to build.

Theresa Villiers, the former environment secretary, said today: 'Despite significant changes to the government's housing algorithm, there is still far too much pressure to build in London and the south.

'Cramming more and more homes into the south will do nothing to deliver the government's promises on levelling up the north.'

Greenfield sites are areas that have not been previously developed while brownfield sites have been recent building.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said: 'To compare housing delivery in different parts of the country based on Local Housing Need formula is to misunderstand the nature and purpose of these numbers.

'That's not how they work and this analysis is misleading.'

There has been widespread Tory backbencher anger over planning reforms that some have dubbed a 'developers' charter' that would hit the party's 'Blue Wall' shire constituencies.

The issue of new housing is a sensitive matter for Boris Johnson (seen jogging in London today)

The Planning Bill was announced in the Queen's Speech earlier this month. Boris Johnson has vowed to build 300,000 homes a year by 2025.

But the plan has put the PM on a collision course with many of his backbenchers. And countryside campaigners have warned that the reforms – the biggest shake-up of the system for 70 years – would mean 'open season for developers' in rural areas.

At least 80 Tories are members of a WhatsApp group that previously united to defeat the Government's botched plans for an algorithm to decide how many homes should be built in each area.

One said yesterday the group had 'woken up' again over the new proposals. The number is far more than would be needed to defeat the plans.

Two Tories openly said they were prepared to vote against it yesterday.

Theresa Villiers, MP for Chipping Barnet on London's border with Hertfordshire, told the BBC: 'Potentially, I am prepared to defy the whip if I thought what was being brought forward was going to be damaging to the quality of life or the environment of my constituency.' Asked if he would also be prepared to defy the whip, fellow London MP Bob Blackman said: 'Very much so.'

Meanwhile, former cabinet minister Damian Green said: 'If you want to spread wealth and prosperity you need to spread housing too.'

The MP for Ashford in Kent – the county known as 'the Garden of England' – added: 'Everything I hear makes me worry that the Government is not going to do that. There will be more building in traditional Tory areas, without providing opportunities and jobs in the Red Wall.'

Roger Gale, Tory MP for North Thanet in Kent, said: 'I'm not prepared to see the Garden of England turned into a building site.

'As far as I'm concerned, this is a developers' charter... I think Boris needs to be looking at the Blue Wall because he may find it crumbles.'

A Housing Ministry spokesman said: 'We are enabling the delivery of new homes the country needs, taking decisive action to ensure our communities have beautiful places to live in that reflect the character of the area.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... -land.html

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Sulaimani will have less water in summer

Officials in Sulaimani province are warning people that municipal water supplies are low, urging them to use less. The situation will get much worse as we enter the hot, dry summer months, according to an expert

Chamchammal will only be able to provide water for households to fill their tanks twice a month. “As you are aware of the terrible condition people of our area face due to the water shortage, it is at the point that in summer households will get water supplies only twice a month,” reads a statement from the mayor’s office on Tuesday.

Addressing the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), the mayor said the water shortage will likely raise the risk of the spread of disease “because the amount of water people receive is too low and not enough for their daily needs.”

This past winter and spring saw much less snow and rain fall than average and neighbouring countries have built many dams in recent years, holding onto the water in shared rivers. The result is a disaster for the Kurdistan Region and Iraq.

“Iraq is a receiver country not a source of water, and now that Iran and Turkey have built dams on the water sources, it has terribly affected the water levels in the Kurdistan Region,” Abdulmutalib Raafat Sarhat, a civil and environmental engineer specializing in water management at the University of Garmian, told Rudaw English on Wednesday.

The Kurdistan Region will face a major water crisis this summer, he warned.

Spring is usually a season when the Kurdistan Region saves water, storing it in dams and reservoirs, “and already we are struggling. It is going to be much worse when we step into July,” he said. He called on the KRG to start building dams in order to save rainwater and take steps to preserve groundwater resources, which are also dropping.

The KRG has long planned to build more dams, though financial problems have put construction on hold. Earlier this month, the agriculture ministry announced a plan to build nine strategic dams.

A drought will have a knock-on effect for years, said Sarhat. “As we have seen, whenever there is a drought, it does not get better immediately the following year, it rather takes a few years,” he said.

Iraq is the world's fifth-most vulnerable nation to the effects of climate change, including water and food insecurity, according to the UN, yet it is lagging behind its neighbours when it comes to a plan to protect its water resources.

Tehran is building a network of dams and canals and Ankara has constructed a mega-dam on the Tigris River at the cost of the ancient city of Hasankeyf that is now under water.

“While the KRG might not have the diplomatic means to solve this issue on a state level, it is the duty of the Iraqi government to solve this issue with neighboring countries and perhaps file a lawsuit, as this is a violation of international laws,” Sarhat said.

The United Nations’ Watercourses Convention of 1997 governs trans-boundary water resources, however only a few dozen states are party to the convention, under which nations are obligated to respect and equitably share their neighbors’ water resources. Syria and Iraq have signed. Turkey and Iran have not.

Turkey and Iran in March said they would cooperate with Iraq on water issues.

Kurdish farmers have warned of a “catastrophe” as Iran blocks the water supply into the Region. Farmers are already affected by water shortages. Shepherds in Garmiyan have abandoned their traditional farming areas to seek greener pastures elsewhere. Directors of the Duhok and Dukan dams have both previously raised concerns about low water levels.

Many people in villages are moving to bigger cities because of water shortages, according to Sarhat. But the urban centres are not immune to the crisis. The head of Sulaimani’s water directorate told local media on Sunday that the city’s water supply is low and asked residents to “shower less.”

https://www.rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/260520213

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Click on image to enlarge:


Kurds raise awareness of environment

Environmental activists in Kirkuk have made a statue to highlight the problem of littering and a lack of green spaces in the city

"This statue is called the Environment Statue and is designed to represent how Kirkuk is covered in trash... This shows how little green space there is in Kirkuk and that most of it is covered in trash," said activist Paywand Subhi.

The statue is made out of plastic and glass bottles, and can be found on the main road into the city.

Subhi and other activists are also painting murals and plating trees to raise awareness of environmental issues.

"We want to make children aware that they shouldn’t throw their trash in these places," said volunteer Evan Faysal.

"Our goal is to make people aware that they shouldn’t litter in public places, especially around schools and places where people commute a lot," added Mohammed Qasim.

Link to Article - Video:
https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/26052021

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Duhok land burned by Turkey

More than 4,000 dunams of land and green spaces have been burned by Turkish bombardments in Duhok province so far this year, and there is nothing the forest police can do about it

“Those war areas are called forbidden areas, and you know no one can go there. If a fire breaks out, the police will not go there. Although trees are sacred, humans are more sacred,” Captain Fuad Ahmed, head of media for the Forest Police and Environment Directorate, told Rudaw English on Tuesday.

“We can control the areas within control of the Regional Government … if there is war we can’t control it at all,” added Ahmed.

In other areas within reach, not having the necessary means to control the fire have left the forest police helpless.

“We have asked for some things, but there is crisis after crisis. We have asked for a helicopter, the forest police should have helicopters. How are you going to control a fire at the top of a mountain?”

According to data sent to Rudaw English by the Kurdistan Region’s forest police directorate, 4,181 dunams of land has been burned by Turkish bombardments in Duhok province so far this year.

Turkey regularly carries out airstrikes and ground operations in the Kurdistan Region, against what it says are positions belonging to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an armed Kurdish group seeking more rights for Kurds in Turkey.

Several operations have been launched this year, including Claw-Eagle 2, in Duhok’s Mount Gara in February, and the ongoing Claw-Lightning and Claw-Thunderbolt operations, which target Duhok’s Metina and Avashin areas, on the mountainous frontier with Turkey.

In the past ten years more than 1,000,000 dunams of land has been burned in the Kurdistan Region, Ahmed Mohammed, spokesperson of the Kurdistan Region’s Environmental Protection and Improvement board told Rudaw English on Tuesday. Around 35 percent of this was from Turkish and Iranian bombardments.

Numerous types of trees have been destroyed in the fires, including oak trees, pine trees, walnut and calypso trees, according to the spokesperson.

The problem is a recurring issue. Turkish and Iranian bombardments destroyed nearly 200,000 dunams of land in the Kurdistan Region last summer, according to a report from the Netherlands-based NGO PAX.

Duhok’s environmental police chief, Brigadier General Kamil Harki, estimates wildfires have increased as much as 70 percent because of the Turkey-PKK conflict.

Conflict is not the only issue ruining the Kurdistan Region’s natural areas, however.

PAX estimates 20 percent of the Region’s vegetation has been lost to fires and logging since 2014, and 47 percent since 1999. Deforestation is also a problem.

Several people across the Kurdistan Region have recently been arrested for cutting down oak trees, including a man who cut down more than 1,000 oak trees in Duhok province. In Sulaimani, green spaces are drying up amid a lack of funds and care.

Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani announced on Sunday that a 5.7 billion dinar budget will be provided for Sulaimani’s green spaces, but an end to the conflict ruining Duhok lands is harder to achieve.

The solution is neither with the forest police nor the environment board when it comes to war.

“The state should be on board and prevent the bombardments on the border areas,” Mohammed said.

https://www.rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/250520214

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Click Photo to Enlarge:


1,300 sick from contaminated water

A scarcity of clean water and the scorching summer heat have led to a high risk of disease among the population of Hasaka in northeastern Syria

Syria’s civil war, now in its tenth year, has damaged much of the country’s infrastructure and killed hundreds of thousands. Millions have been displaced within the country and are living in dire conditions.

“The water is not suitable for drinking,” Faris Hemo, the head of Hasaka National Hospital, told Rudaw on Friday. “People get poisoned by the water,” he said, adding the symptoms they displayed showed they had consumed contaminated water

Hemo said 1,359 people have fallen ill due to contaminated water in the Hasaka province since early April.

Another 369 were diagnosed with acute diarrhea, he added.

Since parts of northern Syria are controlled by Turkey-backed opposition groups, water cuts have become common.

Turkish-backed forces in Sari Kani (Ras al-Ain) have repeatedly cut off the water to Hasaka from Allouk water station, a major source of water for Hasaka

When the water is cut off, residents are forced to buy water tanks and rely on wells, with health authorities warning the water was not suitable for drinking.

Link To Article - Video:

https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/syria/22052021

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Locust infestation decimates crops in Erbil's Bradost

Farmers are struggling to grow their crops as swarms of locusts have descended upon their farmlands and decimated fields in the Bradost area

"I have not planted anything on my land due to my fear of locust attacks," said Rasul Ahmed, a local farmer.

"They eat everything that I plant," Ahmed added.

Several other farmers have replanted their fields numerous times this year already, as their fields are continuously ravaged by the locust infestation.

"We kill a lot of them, but they always come back," said Mustafa Wisw, another local farmer of the area.

"The insecticides I have purchased so far cost me between 500-600,000 Iraqi dinars. Although we spray them, we are unable to defeat them," he explained.

Farmers will be provided with more insecticides by the agriculture ministry, according to Hakeem Abdulla, Director of the Department of Agriculture in Soran.

"As insecticides are in ample supply in the stores, farmers in Sidakan will have more access to them as of Sunday," said Abdulla.

Bradost is among the most fertile areas of Erbil province, with thousands of dunams of farmlands. Produce from these farms are exported to Iraq and Kurdistan during the summer.

Link to Article - Video:

https://www.rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/300520212

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Cigarette littering a serious concern

The littering of cigarette butts has become an increasing problem in Diyarbakir (Amed), as local residents warn that the high levels of smoking in the city are contributing to the toxic pollution

"55 percent of the people in Diyarbakir smoke," warned Yahya Oger, president of the Green Star Association, an anti-smoking organisation.

"Birds eat cigarettes that are thrown on the ground by smokers. They die as a result," Oger added. "Fifty percent of forest fires in Turkey are caused by cigarette butts."

I believe people who throw their cigarette butts on the ground are doing something wrong. They do so out of ignorance. After all, we all live in the same community. We must keep our environment clean," said Leyla Dal, a student from Diyarbakir.

More than 8 million people worldwide die from diseases caused by tobacco use each year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Despite this, the rate of smoking is on the rise, which WHO says poses a great risk to the environment.

Countries like the United Kingdom and Canada are looking to ban the use of tobacco entirely within the next decade.

Link to Article - Video:

https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeas ... y/30052021

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SOHR warns of disaster along Euphrates

Level of water decreases despite Turkish government’s statements of re-pumping water to Syria

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported new low level of Euphrates River water, despite the statements by Turkish government regarding the start of opening dams and releasing Syria’s share of water.

“However, Turkey returned to close the dams, which resulted in alarming decrease of water lever in the river. Meanwhile, power generation turbines have stopped functioning, amid growing popular anger in the Syrian Jazeera region over Turkish seizure of Euphrates River water,” the observatory said in a statement published on Sunday.

On May 15, Turkish government continued to close its dams, retaining the water of Euphrates River, despite the repeated calls for the release of Syria’s share of the water in the river. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported continuous decline in the level of the Euphrates river’s water, along with the stopping of the irrigation and power generation turbines.

The observatory stated that the continuous decrease in the water level at the Euphrates Dam led to the receding of water in the governorates of Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor, in addition to the parts that flow through the Iraqi territory.

“We, at the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, warn against a looming disaster threatening lives and livelihood of more than three million Syrians, who depend on the river for drinking, electricity and irrigation,” SOHR said.

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Water shortages in Kirkuk

More than 2,000 families in the city's Kurdistan neighbourhood are among those affected

"The water comes only once every two days. This sometimes reduces to once every six to seven days. The water isn't clean, though. When we urgently need water, we buy water tanks, but the water is too salty to drink," local Kharman Mahmood told Rudaw.

Water shortages are a problem across Iraq and the Kurdistan Region, and have been exacerbated this year by drought. Kurdistan Region officials have warned that the region is experiencing a "water crisis", while a lack of water has wreaked havoc on farming in sourthern Iraq.

Authorities in Kirkuk said a lack of electricity is the problem.

"If there is sufficient electricity and the water resources provide us with water, we would have no problems," said Jihan Ibrahim, deputy director of Kirkuk's water directorate.

Kirkuk consumes more than 250,000 cubic meters of water every day, according to Ibrahim.

https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/290520211

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Kurdistan areas deforested by Turkey

Areas of the Kurdistan Region bordering Turkey, recently deforested by the Turkish army, used to be so dense with trees that the sky was practically blocked out, witnesses told Rudaw English

An eyewitness, whose photographs of deforested areas in Duhok province went viral recently, spoke on the condition of anonymity to Rudaw English about what he saw during his recent trip to the border region.

“Ten years ago, we used to smuggle animals from Turkey to the Kurdistan Region through these areas. The forests were so dense that we could barely see the sky. We were also able to pass the border without being noticed by Turkish soldiers - thanks to the trees,” the witness recounted.

He was referring to a series of mountains near Nizure, Kesta and Hirore villages in Duhok province. The vicinity of these areas has been invaded by the Turkish army since it launched two military operations against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) on April 23.

Most of the residents of these villages have fled their homes due to intense clashes between the Turkish army and the PKK in the vicinity of, and sometimes inside, the villages.

Turkey deforested a number of areas in Duhok province last year to clear a path going from its border village of Roboski to the Haftanin area of Duhok last year. This year, the country has cleared three paths from Roboski to its bases near Nizure, Kesta and Hirore villages, the eyewitness said.

Sheikh Mus Babat, a contractor who has been asked to clear paths for Turkish soldiers in Duhok, confirmed the deforestation to Rudaw on Tuesday, saying, “We have built a road at Haftanin that extends 74 kilometers into Iraq and another company has built a 38-kilometer road between Ashite village and the Kesta Mountains.”

“It is true the trees have been cut down, however it is only to provide heat for the Turkish soldiers,” he added. “The trees have not been sent to Turkish cities."|

The witness who spoke to Rudaw English is from a village in Turkey which borders the deforested areas in the Kurdistan Region. He says most of the greenery in the photographs he has submitted to Rudaw is not trees but grass. The photographs were taken on Friday.

“I call on everyone to rescue these areas,” he said.

Wim Zwijnburg, a conflict and environment analyst with the Dutch peace organization PAX, confirmed the deforestation process on the border in a series of tweets, providing satellite images of the area before and after the deforestation.

He said the Turkish army has constructed “numerous roads” over the last years as part of its military operations against the PKK “to link various military outposts on mountain tops.”

A satellite image he shared with a tweet shows that the Kurdistan Region’s mountainous areas were mostly green on May 14, 2020 but almost all the trees seem to have been cut down by May 14 this year.

“In other areas, the road construction didn’t merely cut down trees to make space but larger parts of the forest were cut down,” said the analyst, sharing a satellite image which shows the area Turkey has used to clear a path has been left with almost no trees in the last year.

The news about Turkey’s deforestation in Duhok province was first heard from Reving Hirori, a member of the Kurdistan Parliament. He told Rudaw last week that the Turkish army in coordination with a Turkish company has begun cutting down trees in newly-invaded areas of Duhok in order to sell them.

He later told Rudaw English he used to visit the areas bordering Turkey when he was a Peshmerga fighter decades ago. “The forests were so intense that one could not see the sky," echoing the witness's statement.

Turkey and the PKK have clashed in the forested areas and other areas near the border for decades, severely harming the region’s natural environment. The conflict used to be focused more in Kurdish areas inside Turkey, but is now more focused on the Kurdistan Region.

Ferhat Encu is a former lawmaker for the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) in Turkey. He told Rudaw English on Tuesday he has been following the deforestation process for years. Encu is from Roboski - a village best known for the 2011 massacre in which Encu lost 11 members of his family. The Turkish army killed 34 Kurds, mostly children, in the massacre.

“When they [Turkey] set up a base, they prepare a road for it. They cut down all the trees that come before them when making way for new routes. All the trees in this area have been cut down,” said Encu.

He agreed that the cross-border areas in the Kurdistan Region near his home village used to be full of trees, but said this has changed now.

He added he has spoken with several people from the villages, including state-affiliated village guards. “They said that they cut down trees which come before them when making roads.”

Encu accused soldiers and the village guards of the deforestation. “They cut down the trees and transport them via tractors and trucks [to Turkey] and sell them. The villagers have protested this.”

The deforestation news has concerned many people, with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) saying it has warned Turkish authorities they should stop this “unacceptable” act.

Kurdish officials say they have contacted Turkish authorities, asking them to investigate the claims. Duhok Governor Ali Tatar’s office said in a statement on Tuesday that he has spoken with Turkish Consul General in Erbil Hakan Karacay and Sirnak Governor Ali Hamza Pehlivan about the deforestation claims.

“They stressed that this is abuse and is unacceptable. They also called on everyone to report the felling of trees anywhere in the government with evidence so that they can investigate it and prevent the abuse,” read the statement without clarifying which government should people report the abuse to.

Dlsher Abdulsattar, the acting mayor of Zakho, told Rudaw that Turkish authorities have told him the photographs of deforestation are old, claiming they have not cut down any trees.

Rudaw English reached out to the office of the Sirnak governor but has yet to receive a response.

Huseyin Kacmaz, a lawmaker for the HDP, told Rudaw Turkey “intentionally” cuts down trees in the Kurdistan Region.

https://www.rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/010620214

PS:
Just to remind people that Turkey has a long history of burning down forests on Kurdish land