Environmental Impact of the Conflict in Gaza: Preliminary Assessment of Environmental Impacts

United Nations 2 years ago

This Preliminary Assessment was prepared by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in response to an official request from the State of Palestine for an assessment of the environmental impacts of the conflict in the Gaza Strip. The Preliminary Assessment provides a summary of what is known about the environmental impacts of the ongoing conflict in the Gaza Strip, including impacts on environmental management and waste disposal systems; energy, fuel and associated infrastructure; destruction of buildings and conflict-related debris; marine and terrestrial environments; and air quality. In addition to describing known, and in many cases visible, environmental impacts, this assessment highlights conflict-related environmental issues that are of serious concern, but about which the United Nations has limited information at this stage. Conflict was ongoing in Gaza throughout preparation of this report: the security situation and access restrictions prevailing in Gaza influenced the type of analysis UNEP was able to undertake. Some conflict-related impacts - such as the likely contamination of soil and the Coastal Aquifer by chemicals and heavy metals - can only be fully understood through more detailed sampling and analysis, which should be undertaken as soon as conditions permit.
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layersDaily Sustainability Digest

Published about 3 hours ago



Social housing is becoming the proving ground for sustainable construction, with Octopus Energy’s Tenant Power tariff addressing the split incentive that has long blocked retrofit investment. Clearer returns for landlords should accelerate energy-efficient buildings, sustainable building design, sustainable design and eco-design for buildings, placing whole life carbon, net zero whole life carbon, embodied carbon, embodied carbon in materials, whole life carbon assessment, lifecycle assessment, life cycle thinking in construction and life cycle cost at the centre of decision-making. Procurement frameworks are set to move the market beyond pilot projects by aggregating demand, shortening delivery times and giving supply chains the certainty needed to scale net zero carbon buildings and low carbon building programmes. That shift supports environmental sustainability in construction through low carbon design, low carbon construction materials, low embodied carbon materials, renewable building materials, sustainable material specification, environmental product declarations (EPDs), resource efficiency in construction and circular economy in construction, including end-of-life reuse in construction. For teams working to BREEAM and BREEAM v7, the priority is measurable building lifecycle performance, carbon footprint reduction and a lower carbon footprint of construction across greener, more investable retrofit programmes.

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