Government efforts to stop bulldozing.. Will the Ministry of Environment succeed in deterring those

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[size=52]Government efforts to stop bulldozing.. Will the Ministry of Environment succeed in deterring those encroaching on agricultural lands?[/size]

[size=45]The Ministry of Environment’s talk about implementing strict measures to bulldoze orchards and cut down trees was welcomed by environmental activists and local officials, who stated that although this step is late, it could serve as a deterrent to violators. Residential
encroachment is sweeping away thousands of agricultural lands in Iraq, in addition to the fact that tree cutting operations are often carried out by government departments under the pretext of developing streets and reducing traffic congestion.
Ahmed Hamdan, a member of the Environment and Biodiversity Protection Group, said: “We support the Ministry of Environment by taking any measure that would improve the environment, and this statement that was recently issued comes late, as it has been long awaited by many activists in this field and environmental organizations.” The
spokesman for the Ministry of Environment, Louay Sadiq Al-Mukhtar, stated that the ministry seeks to implement strict measures to prevent the bulldozing of trees, orchards and agricultural lands, the most important of which is what is included in the Environmental Protection and Improvement Law No. 27 of 2009, noting that in each governorate there is an Environmental Protection and Improvement Council headed by the governor, and there is a Federal or Federal Environmental Protection and Improvement Council headed by the Minister of Environment.
Hamdan added, “Such deterrent measures would stop the destruction of orchards and green spaces on the outskirts of cities and rural areas, in order to create green spaces that preserve the environment and biodiversity, which is what all environmental activists seek.”
He hopes that all relevant ministries and governorates “support this measure to stop the destruction and find solutions to the residential encroachment on agricultural lands by relying on vertical construction and the use of open spaces rather than agricultural ones. We also ask all concerned to plant other trees to increase the vegetation and tree cover in the country.”
It is noteworthy that the Baghdad Municipality decided last year to impose a fine of 5 million dinars on anyone who cuts down a tree, and formed a monitoring cell in all regions.
The lack of green spaces has begun to have its environmental and health effects in Iraq, as the country ranked second as the worst polluted country after the African country of Chad. In a previous report by “Al-Alam Al-Jadeed”, environmental specialists attributed this to the high emissions and exhausts of cars and the lack of a green belt. They called for a shift to public transportation and clean energy and obligating the owners of generators and factories to filter the gases emitted from them, amid an increase in cases of asthma, chronic chest diseases, and cancer.
For his part, the Director of the Babylon Environment, Maki Al-Shammari, indicated that “the Babylon Environment Directorate is keen to address desertification despite its worsening rates, and we do not grant any approval for construction on agricultural lands except after the approval of the Ministry of Agriculture.”
In this regard, Al-Shammari added that “our directorate has taken two directions in this regard, the first is to activate the Environmental Protection and Improvement Law and prosecute violators in order to apply prison sentences and fines. We have filed more than one complaint with the judiciary against violators, the most recent of which was against people who cut down 7 old trees in the Al-Mahawil district, north of the governorate.”
The Director of Babylon Environment continues, “The second trend is to request departments that are working on establishing projects and renovating roads to oblige them to include a percentage of afforestation in the projects and for the municipalities to take care of the trees. This matter will be followed up through the Environmental Protection Council headed by the governor.”
In 2020, the Ministry of Agriculture announced that Iraq needs more than 14 billion trees to revive areas suffering from desertification, in addition to launching a project based on distributing saplings to municipalities in Baghdad, governorates and civil society organizations for free to plant them inside and around cities to support the green belt to prevent the desert from encroaching on cities.
The Arab region as a whole suffers from the negative effects of climate change, and in Iraq, the rate of desertification in irrigated lands is about 71 percent, as water levels have declined significantly, most notably the Euphrates River, whose drought has affected Anbar Governorate, the marshes and the southern governorates.
In addition, legal researcher Haider Al-Shammari confirms that “many laws and decisions that protect the environment exist, but their failure to be implemented is regrettable, especially since most of the violations against trees and agricultural lands are either due to deliberate government measures, or due to negligence and lack of oversight.”
In a reading of the Environmental Protection and Improvement Law No. (27) of 2009, he points out that “Article 18 of this law prohibits the cutting of old trees in public areas within cities except with the permission of the Chairman of the Environmental Protection and Improvement Council in the governorate,” noting that the law “defined old trees as those that are (30) thirty years old or more, but this is a legislative shortcoming, as younger trees should not be cut either.”
Al-Shammari adds that “the law also prohibits the cutting of forest trees except after obtaining the approval of the authorities concerned with granting licenses based on knowledge of the annual production per dunum,” noting that “anyone who violates the provisions of this law shall be punished with imprisonment for three months, or a fine of one to twenty million dinars, or both penalties.”
He stated that “the law also allocated rewards in Article 31, which gave the minister the right to grant rewards to persons who carry out work or projects that would protect and improve the environment, the amount of which and how to disburse them shall be determined by instructions issued in accordance with the law.”[/size]
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