Prime Minister: Syria has seriously engaged in global efforts to confront climate change

Dubai – Prime Minister Hussein Arnous on Saturday affirmed that Syria has seriously engaged in global efforts to confront climate change and limit its effects.

In a speech at the World Climate Action Summit (COP28) in Dubai, UAE, Arnous called for joining efforts as to push climate action forward and accelerate the pace of reducing emissions through energy transformation, integrated and sustainable land use management, activating loss and damage reduction systems, fulfilling the countries’ obligations related to climate action.

He stressed that securing enough funding is the cornerstone of climate action, as mitigation, adaptation, reducing loss and damage and climate technology, all require adequate financing.

The premier said “Syria is suffering from the impacts of climate change, and this is evident in the decline in the rainfall rate and the increasing dust storms and the drought waves, which have exacerbated the problem of desertification, created imbalance in the distribution of rain and led to floods and heat waves”. He pointed out that what has worsened the situation is the damage caused by the terrorist war on environment in Syria.

He clarified that air pollution rates have increased significantly as a result of terrorist acts, the seizure and burning of oil pipelines and wells, oil refining using primitive methods in areas under the American occupation in northeastern Syria, oil spill into the surrounding environment, polluting the soil and part of the surface and groundwater, and burning large areas of forests.

In addition, Arnous said, Syria’s share of the water of the Euphrates River was decreased by the upstream country’s breach of its international obligations and failure to allow the passage of the quantities agreed upon under international agreements.

He added that the unilateral coercive economic measures imposed on the country have also increased its suffering from the effects of climate change.

“The Israeli occupation hostile practices in the occupied Syrian Golan, including uprooting trees and burying dangerous waste have led to the deterioration of environment in this region and to depriving the Syrian citizens from getting their needs of water in a blatant violation of international laws”, Arnous clarified.

“Despite the difficult circumstances it has gone through, Syria has continued to work and adhere to measures aiming at protecting the environment, confronting climate change and integrating the environmental dimension into development and reconstruction plans, and it has also been committed to the international agreements it has signed in the field of environment and climate change,” the prime Minister said.

He explained that Syria has approved the Nationally Determined Contributions document as part of its commitment to the Paris Agreement, adopted the National Program for Climate Change in Syria and the plans for adaptation to climate change, created a fund to mitigate the effects of drought and natural disasters and adopted the national strategy for the transition to renewable energy.

Hamda Mustafa