Keep Kurdistan clean: KRG launches week-long campaign
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) launched a week-long environmental campaign, urging greater political and civic engagement in keeping Kurdistan clean.
On April 7, 2008, Kurdistan’s parliament set April 16 as Kurdistan Environment Day, coinciding with the anniversary of chemical attacks by the former Iraqi regime on Shiekh Wassanan and Balisan on April 16, 1987.
“On this occasion, today, I declare a week-long campaign for cleaning up the nature and environment of Kurdistan,” KRG Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani said in a speech on Tuesday.
Since the 18th century, Kurdistan’s environment has been damaged and polluted by conflicts, land mines, and chemical weapons that still pollute the soil, and not enough has been done to protect the environment, he said.
The KRG has made a start, he explained, planting hundreds of thousands of trees, establishing green spaces like Sami Abdulrahman Park, and most recently shutting down unregulated oil refineries, but there is much more to do. “The journey will continue and not stop,” said Barzani.
The government recently introduced harsher penalties for polluters. It should do more too, said Barzani, but a big responsibility lies with the people. “The people themselves have to have the culture and awareness of environmental protection. They have to consider themselves the owners of Kurdistan’s nature and environment.”
Steps he recommended individuals take are to stop littering, embrace renewable energies, and end over-reliance on gas-guzzling cars, instead thinking about recycling and choosing more environmentally friendly options like public transport or electric vehicles.
The rising number of cars on Kurdistan Region’s streets and growth of industries based in the Region have damaged the environment, Halo Askary, head of the Environment Protection Agency, said at the campaign launch event.
Every day, nearly 7 million litres of fuel are burned by some 1.7 million vehicles in the Region, he said.
The Kurdistan Region is playing catch up on environmental issues. Sitting on a wealth of oil, it has been slow to turn to renewable energy sources and without domestic recycling facilities it exports a lot of plastic and cardboard waste.
Some 2.2 million acres of forest have been lost over the past 19 years because of fires, deforestation, and limited budgets to maintain them, according to a survey done last year by the Ministry of Agriculture.
Careless picnickers are another problem.
Issuing a plea to all the people of Kurdistan, Barzani called on them to “protect the environment to the best of their efforts, to preserve cleanness in everything. Consider this beautiful country of Kurdistan, this beautiful nature as yours and protect it.”