Kindah Ibrahim on Rebuilding Syria’s Agriculture Sector
Rebel fighters seized Damascus in December 2024, ending the half-century-long rule of Bashar al-Assad and his father and predecessor, Hafez al-Assad. Now, having toppled the family that sparked a civil war in response to large-scale protests in 2011, the Syrian people have a long-awaited chance to rebuild. But it comes as the harms of climate change are deepening across the region.
Temperatures in Syria are rising, water stress is worsening, and desertification creeps across new land each year. Results of the UN’s first Global Stocktake, announced at COP28 in 2023, warned that without more substantial commitments to climate action, the planet faces a rise in temperature of three degrees by 2100, which could render swathes of the Eastern Mediterranean region and broader Middle East unlivable. Making matters worse, Syria must grapple with the fallout of conflict-related pollution and chronic neglect and mismanagement of natural resources during the fourteen-year-long war. (For more on how Syria’s new government is addressing climate change, read my earlier reporting in Atmos.)