UN Will Send Post-Conflict Environmental Team to Gaza

Early UN assessments show that damage to infrastructure has led to increased discharge of raw sewage into groundwater supplies and the Mediterranean Sea, posing a problem for authorities and the public in Gaza and potentially also in Israel.

Palestinian boys show a visitor lakes of untreated sewage in Gaza. (Photo courtesy Free Gaza)

The top UN environment official today visited the Gaza Strip to prepare for the team's work. Achim Steiner, UN under-secretary general and executive director of the UN Environment Programme, has been meeting with senior Palestinian officials and UN staff to hear their concerns and priorities for rehabilitation.

"I have requested UNEP's Post Conflict and Disaster Management Branch to deploy a team of experts to the Gaza Strip by the second week of May to carry out the assessment," Steiner said.

"The experts have extensive experience in assessing the environmental impact of conflict in the Balkans, Afghanistan, Sudan and the Middle East and in making key recommendations for action," he said.

The environmental assessment was formally requested by a decision of UNEP's Governing Council/Global Ministerial Environment Forum, at a gathering of the world's environment ministers at the organization's headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya in February.

"I look forward to receiving rapid and clear recommendations emanating from the May assessment. This will inform local planning and assist the planned reconstruction by the international community. The UNEP team's findings will be based on systematic field work, independent laboratory analysis and scientific rigor," he said.

Girl walks past bombed buildings in the Gaza Strip. (Photo by Oneaimgraphics)

Steiner emphasized that an assessment of the environmental damage is a priority for UNEP and an important step in repairing some of the threats to the environment that were exacerbated by the conflict in January.

The team will include up to eight UNEP and international independent experts in areas of water and waste water management, asbestos and hazardous wastes monitoring, coastal and marine environmental assessment and institutional and economic evaluation.

Their work follows the early recovery needs assessment led by the UN Development Programme. A few days after the cease-fire in January 2009, a UNEP expert was deployed to the Gaza Strip to make an initial assessment of the environmental impacts as part of the UNDP-led Early Recovery and Reconstruction Assessment.

The findings of the initial assessment were used at the donors conference in Sharm el-Sheikh on March 2.

These early assessments identified areas in need of more extensive, investigation following the conflict in December 2008 and January 2009 including:

• Solid Waste Management: The recent conflict created large quantities of building demolition waste, which is often contaminated with hazardous materials such as asbestos.
  Even before the most recent conflict, Gaza did not have an appropriate system for waste segregation and disposal. Now, the creation of such a large quantity of solid waste has overloaded the already inadequate infrastructure.


• Waste Water Management: The Gaza Strip lacked an adequate sewerage system prior to the most recent conflict and damage of the existing sewerage infrastructure further aggravated an already serious public health situation. Detailed analysis of the impact on ground water will be required.


• Management of Contaminated Land: Small-scale industries, such as factories, cement works and garages were struck during the conflict. This has created numerous potentially contaminated sites within the urban environment.

Laboratory results from the 10 day UNEP assessment mission in May are expected by early June with a report and recommendations anticipated in early July.

UNEP has previously undertaken two major studies within the Gaza Strip, the first being the report entitled "The Environmental Situation in Occupied Palestinian Territories" published in February 2003.

The study involved site visits, interviews and desk-studies by a team of international and national experts within the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and resulted in a comprehensive document with 136 recommendations for follow-up activities.

The second report was begun in 2005, following the Israeli disengagement from the Gaza Strip, when UNEP was approached by the Palestinian Environment Quality Authority to conduct a Post Disengagement Environmental Assessment.

UNEP deployed a team of staff members and international experts, using state of the art field monitoring and sampling equipment. The report, published in March 2006, details the findings from laboratory analysis of numerous soil, sediment, water and plant samples and field observations.

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