It may be hard to imagine now, but Syrians once thought of their environmental treasures as being close to the soul of their country. As recently as a century ago, the undammed Euphrates surged in soil-nourishing annual floods, and long-gone carnivores like the Persian leopard stalked the vast forests of cypress and pine in the coastal mountains. The famous Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani called his native city, Damascus, the place where “water begins . . . for wherever you lean your head, a stream flows.”
Today, after decades of authoritarian rule and fourteen years of civil war, many of the rivers are but a trickle, or choked with pollutants; the forests are devastated; farms are in danger; and enforced environmental regulations are almost nonexistent.
It’s much more than an aesthetic crisis. Syria’s environmental catastrophe poses direct threats to its economy and stability, and could yet be its undoing. Agricultural mismanagement and drought were one of many factors that set the stage for the onset of the country’s civil war (the exact degree to which drought contributed is debated), and today Syria is even less prepared for environmental disasters than it was fifteen years ago. Yet too often, policymakers continue to treat environmental concerns as a luxury—something to be considered, if at all, down the road when other matters have been resolved.
But the Syrian environment cannot wait for the rest of the country’s problems to be addressed. Moreover, the looming environmental catastrophe is deeply intertwined with Syria’s other crises. Policymakers—including Syria’s new government and the international community—must start making environmental policy in Syria a priority, or risk plunging the country back into chaos.
A Deep Environmental Pain
When the band of rebels led by Ahmed al-Sharaa rolled south across Syria in December 2024 to finally free the country from the regime of Bashar al-Assad—Sharaa is now president—they encountered a nation devastated in more ways than one.
Syria’s economy is broken: some 90 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, and 12.9 million Syrians, including children, have experienced an alarming level of hunger and malnutrition, while millions of displaced Syrians inside and outside of the country are unable to meet basic needs such as access to clean water and electricity. So too for its institutions and infrastructure.
But Syria’s suffering goes further—war and authoritarian mismanagement have also deeply scarred the land itself. Fully a third of the country’s forests have disappeared since 2011—a loss driven by clear-cutting for firewood, ferocious wildfires, and artillery and bombing. Air pollution increased during the conflict even as the energy sector cratered, and oil fires have befouled agricultural and grazing lands.
Syria’s water resources are in a particularly dire state. Two-thirds of Syria’s water facilities suffered extensive damage during the civil war.
Syria’s water resources are in a particularly dire state. Two-thirds of Syria’s water facilities suffered extensive damage during the civil war, which, when combined with worsening climate conditions in the region, has made the population vulnerable to fresh conflict and displacement—especially in rural areas where most people depend on agriculture. (The Assad regime even targeted water infrastructure to punish rebels.) The Euphrates, the country’s breadbasket and a lifeline in Syria’s northeast, is being throttled by climate change and upstream exploitation, with flows today often a half of their historic level. Research has estimated that the cumulative water loss in Syria up to 2022, due to climate and conflict-related destruction, is approximately 2.2 billion cubic meters—enough to cover some 7,000 square kilometers in a foot of water. The upshot has been loss of farmland, widespread water shortages, and even cholera. Syrian farmers are forced to relocate to urban centers like Damascus, exacerbating the economic crisis and intensifying competition over resources and employment.
The Need for State Capacity
The current Syrian government faces two key issues when responding to environmental concerns: a lack of state capacity to address climate and ecological threats and degradation, and the de-prioritization of environmental concerns in favor of seemingly more urgent issues. Other countries dealing with regime change and other transitions have faced similar challenges. Iraq, for example, has faced a dual crisis of state actors’ unwillingness and inability to address the environmental question, which has devastated the country’s ecosystems and led to economic, political, and social turmoil.
In Syria as in Iraq, addressing environmental issues and minimizing ecological degradation to build environmental resilience and an effective climate response require strong state capacity—the ability of a government to introduce and achieve general and specific goals. These steps require the establishment of a strong, unfragmented state with a transparent chain of command and a monopoly on authority and power. Only such a strong state can introduce and enforce environmental policy and regulations, which will likely face resistance on various fronts: from political and economic actors whose interests may be threatened; from populations whose lifestyles may be affected; and from regional actors who share natural resources such as water access with the country. State capacity also enables governments to build the necessary infrastructure, ensure the continuity of introduced policies from one administration to the next, and ensure effective communication between ministries to achieve overall goals.
The challenges facing Syria in this regard are particularly daunting. The brutal fifty-four-year reign of the Assad family in Syria left the country politically and geographically fragmented. Even after Sharaa’s rebel group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, seized power, different factions still controlled different parts of the country. Even now, confrontation between competing actors remains the norm.
While Sharaa’s new government has been attempting to project power and unity and to legitimize itself to the Syrian population and the international community—especially considering Sharaa’s history of affiliation with al-Qaeda—a strong state project remains a distant and challenging goal for now, and events on the ground indicate a state with limited capacity and control.
Not a Back Burner Issue
A limited state capacity raises the question of prioritization for environmental issues. But the case of Iraq shows that environmental issues and state capacity are too intertwined to be pursued as separate goals. After Saddam Hussein fell in 2003, the government prioritized what was considered by decision-makers at the time to be the immediate challenges and threats to the country’s survival. These issues included governmental formation, state building, addressing internal conflict between competing actors, arresting and trying former regime members, and later dealing with the threat of the Islamic State and its aftermath. These issues were deemed more significant to the fragile regime than environmental protection and climate response, which were often seen as luxury issues rather than existential ones.
But Iraq’s environmental devastation is catching up with the country just as it is finally approaching something like stability. A bad drought, a devastating heatwave, a local fight over water rights that evolves into a larger conflict—any of these increasingly likely problems now lurk like so many landmines in the path of Iraq’s progress. Just as state capacity is required for environmental success, an environment in crisis can swiftly undermine state capacity.
The Syrian government is facing a similar problem. The country’s myriad present challenges include competing actors on the ground—whether national, regional, or international—who are seeking a foothold in the fragile, emerging power structure; questions of legitimizing the current regime and capturing members of the former regime; drug trafficking and the threat from widespread Captagon addiction; attacks on minorities; and an ever-worsening economic crisis. And while Sharaa and his former rebel group effectively governed the rebel-held governorate of Idlib for the last several years, governing a diverse and complex Syria is not an easy task.
In the face of these immediate concerns, the environment is likely to be viewed as a secondary issue. Consider which ministries the new regime has established—a ministry of the environment is notably missing. The government apparently expects the newly formed Ministry of Emergency and Disaster Management and the Ministry of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform to deal with environmental issues—revealing an assumption that interaction with the environment will primarily focus on disaster response and recovery. Yet, environmental response is a long-term process involving policies, education, and infrastructure development. And while agricultural reforms are part of environmental resilience, environmental issues are not limited to the agricultural sector and include, for example, managing other resources, such as addressing water-sharing.
Deprioritizing environmental and climate concerns will have negative impacts on the Syrian state’s capacity and stability, thus creating a cyclical crisis in which environmental issues are pushed forever further down the agenda, and the state’s ability to respond in the future, when conditions become dire, is consistently undermined.
This kind of a self-reinforcing crisis is precisely the risk for Syria at the moment. Ecological degradation has long been linked to the increased onset of conflict, either because of rising competition over limited resources or because existing conflicts are exacerbated. Ecological degradation can also worsen economic conditions like poverty and unemployment. Environmental degradation, particularly when combined with economic and political pressures, is associated with higher levels of displacement, which in turn can lead to new challenges, such as further resource depletion in host communities, as well as increased conflict between the displaced and local populations. These conditions are particularly threatening for states in transitional periods since addressing a displacement crisis requires a capacity for infrastructure development to alleviate pressure on the local population and to protect the displaced population.
Caption: A dried out river bed in the Barada Valley this spring, after an exceptionally dry winter in Syria. Source: Ed Ram/Getty Images
It Is Not Too Late
As climate conditions continue to worsen in the region, the new Syrian government must address the decades-long neglect and active destruction of the environment. While the government has not yet taken direct steps to do so, it is not too late for Syria and its people.
The new Syrian government must invest in long-term policies and strategies that center the environment. These strategies include forming governmental entities that directly work to coordinate solutions to environmental degradation and to build future resilience. Strategies must also take into account Syria’s neighbors. For example, policies must be introduced to manage the relationship between Syria, Turkey, and Iraq in pursuit of an equitable water-sharing regime. None of this will be easy, considering the complex relationship Syria has with its neighbors, especially Turkey. Still, a clear commitment from the Syrian government is necessary, which can be achieved by creating powerful agencies to introduce and implement policies.
Finally, the new Syrian leadership must also understand the environment not in isolation but as a continuation of existing social relationships. While environmental degradation can increase the odds of conflict, conflict can also significantly harm the environment. As a result, the new regime must prioritize the establishment of a strong national identity, and rebuild the country so that the Syrian people have fair access to resources, as well as power and representation, regardless of their ethnic or religious background.
The international community, including the United States, can further these objectives by continuing down the path of lifting sanctions on Sharaa’s government and engaging it on environmental issues. The Trump administration is nothing short of backward in its thinking and approach on environmental issues, but activism and advocacy can still have an effect, and those who care about Syria and the region should continue to petition for a focus on the environment in policy.
Ultimately, the future of Syria and its people remains precarious and unknown. But what is certain is that the well-being of the Syrian people is inextricably linked to the environment and the land.
Header Image Caption: A girl fills a water bottle to drink from a pipe spraying water near the site of a spring that has been used since Roman times on May 28 near Damascus. The Barada Valley, the main water source for Damascus, is depleted this year after one of the driest winters in decades. Source: Ed Ram/Getty Images
Tags: syria, natural resources, environment of Syria
Syria’s Environmental Crisis Is Its Achilles Heel
It may be hard to imagine now, but Syrians once thought of their environmental treasures as being close to the soul of their country. As recently as a century ago, the undammed Euphrates surged in soil-nourishing annual floods, and long-gone carnivores like the Persian leopard stalked the vast forests of cypress and pine in the coastal mountains. The famous Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani called his native city, Damascus, the place where “water begins . . . for wherever you lean your head, a stream flows.”
Today, after decades of authoritarian rule and fourteen years of civil war, many of the rivers are but a trickle, or choked with pollutants; the forests are devastated; farms are in danger; and enforced environmental regulations are almost nonexistent.
It’s much more than an aesthetic crisis. Syria’s environmental catastrophe poses direct threats to its economy and stability, and could yet be its undoing. Agricultural mismanagement and drought were one of many factors that set the stage for the onset of the country’s civil war (the exact degree to which drought contributed is debated), and today Syria is even less prepared for environmental disasters than it was fifteen years ago. Yet too often, policymakers continue to treat environmental concerns as a luxury—something to be considered, if at all, down the road when other matters have been resolved.
But the Syrian environment cannot wait for the rest of the country’s problems to be addressed. Moreover, the looming environmental catastrophe is deeply intertwined with Syria’s other crises. Policymakers—including Syria’s new government and the international community—must start making environmental policy in Syria a priority, or risk plunging the country back into chaos.
A Deep Environmental Pain
When the band of rebels led by Ahmed al-Sharaa rolled south across Syria in December 2024 to finally free the country from the regime of Bashar al-Assad—Sharaa is now president—they encountered a nation devastated in more ways than one.
Syria’s economy is broken: some 90 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, and 12.9 million Syrians, including children, have experienced an alarming level of hunger and malnutrition, while millions of displaced Syrians inside and outside of the country are unable to meet basic needs such as access to clean water and electricity. So too for its institutions and infrastructure.
But Syria’s suffering goes further—war and authoritarian mismanagement have also deeply scarred the land itself. Fully a third of the country’s forests have disappeared since 2011—a loss driven by clear-cutting for firewood, ferocious wildfires, and artillery and bombing. Air pollution increased during the conflict even as the energy sector cratered, and oil fires have befouled agricultural and grazing lands.
Syria’s water resources are in a particularly dire state. Two-thirds of Syria’s water facilities suffered extensive damage during the civil war, which, when combined with worsening climate conditions in the region, has made the population vulnerable to fresh conflict and displacement—especially in rural areas where most people depend on agriculture. (The Assad regime even targeted water infrastructure to punish rebels.) The Euphrates, the country’s breadbasket and a lifeline in Syria’s northeast, is being throttled by climate change and upstream exploitation, with flows today often a half of their historic level. Research has estimated that the cumulative water loss in Syria up to 2022, due to climate and conflict-related destruction, is approximately 2.2 billion cubic meters—enough to cover some 7,000 square kilometers in a foot of water. The upshot has been loss of farmland, widespread water shortages, and even cholera. Syrian farmers are forced to relocate to urban centers like Damascus, exacerbating the economic crisis and intensifying competition over resources and employment.
The Need for State Capacity
The current Syrian government faces two key issues when responding to environmental concerns: a lack of state capacity to address climate and ecological threats and degradation, and the de-prioritization of environmental concerns in favor of seemingly more urgent issues. Other countries dealing with regime change and other transitions have faced similar challenges. Iraq, for example, has faced a dual crisis of state actors’ unwillingness and inability to address the environmental question, which has devastated the country’s ecosystems and led to economic, political, and social turmoil.
In Syria as in Iraq, addressing environmental issues and minimizing ecological degradation to build environmental resilience and an effective climate response require strong state capacity—the ability of a government to introduce and achieve general and specific goals. These steps require the establishment of a strong, unfragmented state with a transparent chain of command and a monopoly on authority and power. Only such a strong state can introduce and enforce environmental policy and regulations, which will likely face resistance on various fronts: from political and economic actors whose interests may be threatened; from populations whose lifestyles may be affected; and from regional actors who share natural resources such as water access with the country. State capacity also enables governments to build the necessary infrastructure, ensure the continuity of introduced policies from one administration to the next, and ensure effective communication between ministries to achieve overall goals.
The challenges facing Syria in this regard are particularly daunting. The brutal fifty-four-year reign of the Assad family in Syria left the country politically and geographically fragmented. Even after Sharaa’s rebel group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, seized power, different factions still controlled different parts of the country. Even now, confrontation between competing actors remains the norm.
While Sharaa’s new government has been attempting to project power and unity and to legitimize itself to the Syrian population and the international community—especially considering Sharaa’s history of affiliation with al-Qaeda—a strong state project remains a distant and challenging goal for now, and events on the ground indicate a state with limited capacity and control.
Not a Back Burner Issue
A limited state capacity raises the question of prioritization for environmental issues. But the case of Iraq shows that environmental issues and state capacity are too intertwined to be pursued as separate goals. After Saddam Hussein fell in 2003, the government prioritized what was considered by decision-makers at the time to be the immediate challenges and threats to the country’s survival. These issues included governmental formation, state building, addressing internal conflict between competing actors, arresting and trying former regime members, and later dealing with the threat of the Islamic State and its aftermath. These issues were deemed more significant to the fragile regime than environmental protection and climate response, which were often seen as luxury issues rather than existential ones.
But Iraq’s environmental devastation is catching up with the country just as it is finally approaching something like stability. A bad drought, a devastating heatwave, a local fight over water rights that evolves into a larger conflict—any of these increasingly likely problems now lurk like so many landmines in the path of Iraq’s progress. Just as state capacity is required for environmental success, an environment in crisis can swiftly undermine state capacity.
The Syrian government is facing a similar problem. The country’s myriad present challenges include competing actors on the ground—whether national, regional, or international—who are seeking a foothold in the fragile, emerging power structure; questions of legitimizing the current regime and capturing members of the former regime; drug trafficking and the threat from widespread Captagon addiction; attacks on minorities; and an ever-worsening economic crisis. And while Sharaa and his former rebel group effectively governed the rebel-held governorate of Idlib for the last several years, governing a diverse and complex Syria is not an easy task.
In the face of these immediate concerns, the environment is likely to be viewed as a secondary issue. Consider which ministries the new regime has established—a ministry of the environment is notably missing. The government apparently expects the newly formed Ministry of Emergency and Disaster Management and the Ministry of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform to deal with environmental issues—revealing an assumption that interaction with the environment will primarily focus on disaster response and recovery. Yet, environmental response is a long-term process involving policies, education, and infrastructure development. And while agricultural reforms are part of environmental resilience, environmental issues are not limited to the agricultural sector and include, for example, managing other resources, such as addressing water-sharing.
Deprioritizing environmental and climate concerns will have negative impacts on the Syrian state’s capacity and stability, thus creating a cyclical crisis in which environmental issues are pushed forever further down the agenda, and the state’s ability to respond in the future, when conditions become dire, is consistently undermined.
This kind of a self-reinforcing crisis is precisely the risk for Syria at the moment. Ecological degradation has long been linked to the increased onset of conflict, either because of rising competition over limited resources or because existing conflicts are exacerbated. Ecological degradation can also worsen economic conditions like poverty and unemployment. Environmental degradation, particularly when combined with economic and political pressures, is associated with higher levels of displacement, which in turn can lead to new challenges, such as further resource depletion in host communities, as well as increased conflict between the displaced and local populations. These conditions are particularly threatening for states in transitional periods since addressing a displacement crisis requires a capacity for infrastructure development to alleviate pressure on the local population and to protect the displaced population.
Caption: A dried out river bed in the Barada Valley this spring, after an exceptionally dry winter in Syria. Source: Ed Ram/Getty Images
It Is Not Too Late
As climate conditions continue to worsen in the region, the new Syrian government must address the decades-long neglect and active destruction of the environment. While the government has not yet taken direct steps to do so, it is not too late for Syria and its people.
The new Syrian government must invest in long-term policies and strategies that center the environment. These strategies include forming governmental entities that directly work to coordinate solutions to environmental degradation and to build future resilience. Strategies must also take into account Syria’s neighbors. For example, policies must be introduced to manage the relationship between Syria, Turkey, and Iraq in pursuit of an equitable water-sharing regime. None of this will be easy, considering the complex relationship Syria has with its neighbors, especially Turkey. Still, a clear commitment from the Syrian government is necessary, which can be achieved by creating powerful agencies to introduce and implement policies.
Finally, the new Syrian leadership must also understand the environment not in isolation but as a continuation of existing social relationships. While environmental degradation can increase the odds of conflict, conflict can also significantly harm the environment. As a result, the new regime must prioritize the establishment of a strong national identity, and rebuild the country so that the Syrian people have fair access to resources, as well as power and representation, regardless of their ethnic or religious background.
The international community, including the United States, can further these objectives by continuing down the path of lifting sanctions on Sharaa’s government and engaging it on environmental issues. The Trump administration is nothing short of backward in its thinking and approach on environmental issues, but activism and advocacy can still have an effect, and those who care about Syria and the region should continue to petition for a focus on the environment in policy.
Ultimately, the future of Syria and its people remains precarious and unknown. But what is certain is that the well-being of the Syrian people is inextricably linked to the environment and the land.
Header Image Caption: A girl fills a water bottle to drink from a pipe spraying water near the site of a spring that has been used since Roman times on May 28 near Damascus. The Barada Valley, the main water source for Damascus, is depleted this year after one of the driest winters in decades. Source: Ed Ram/Getty Images
Tags: syria, natural resources, environment of Syria