Sep 15, 2026 | | This post is also available in: Arabic
Syria has been marred by a plethora of environmental crises. Forests have been stripped bare by systematic logging, forest fires, and charcoal production. Recurrent droughts and the collapse of irrigation infrastructure have left communities without reliable water. Agricultural land has been eroded, taking rural livelihoods with it. Makeshift oil extraction and refining have poisoned soil, air, and groundwater, leaving respiratory illness, cancers, and fouled wells behind them. This is not background scenery to the conflict; it is one of its most durable legacies.
These are not abstract losses. When a well is fouled, what is at stake is the right to water. When children grow up beside a burner, it is the right to health. When farmland stops producing, it is the right to an adequate standard of living, to food, and to housing once families are forced to move on. Together, they also amount to the denial of the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, as well as the right to life itself.
Much of this damage was not incidental. It was the product of policy and neglect under the Assad regime. Our report Business Responsibility Towards the Environment and Human Rights in Syria found that the charcoal trade along the coast was controlled by individuals directly connected to the Assad family, and tenders to clear the burnt sites were awarded to businesspeople close to the regime as well. Destruction on that scale, deliberate and foreseeable, raises the question of whether such acts may amount to ecocide.
With the folding of that page, the government now has a prime opportunity to democratise environmental governance and transform it into a recovery tool. It need not build that machinery from scratch. A readily available framework already exists, one from which both government and society stand to benefit: the Aarhus Convention.
What the Convention does
Adopted in 1998, the Convention rests on a simple premise: environmental outcomes cannot be separated from transparency, participation, and accountability. It does not dictate to states what their environmental policy should be; it tells them how those decisions should be made, and who has a right to be part of them. It stands on three pillars:
1) Access to information in environmental matters: authorities must gather environmental information and disseminate it, and answer public requests without an interest having to be stated.
2) Public participation in environmental decision-making: communities must have a genuine say in projects, plans, and policies affecting the environment, early enough that the outcome is still open to influence.
3) Access to justice in environmental matters: people must be able to go to a judicial or administrative process when their rights are infringed, and obtain a meaningful remedy.
Though adopted under the UN Economic Commission for Europe, the Convention is open to states outside that region. Guinea-Bissau became the first to do so in 2023.
Why this should be a priority now
It may seem odd to place an environmental treaty near the top of a crowded transitional agenda. It is not. Environmental harm is a conflict multiplier: it drives poverty, deepens inequality, sharpens grievances over water and land, and pushes people into displacement. Left unaddressed, it will keep generating the very instability that recovery is meant to end.
Accession would introduce procedural safeguards against further harm, embed environmental protection within governance reform rather than treating it as a secondary concern, and give citizens a lawful channel for grievances. Because the Convention constrains process rather than policy, it suits a transitional context particularly well. It would also signal a credible commitment to transparency and the rule of law, which matters for donor confidence. Above all, accession would help restore trust, foster accountability, enhance transparency, and complement efforts to tackle corruption, which thrives wherever decisions are made behind closed doors.
Environmental matters are human rights matters
In October 2021, the UN Human Rights Council recognised the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment; the UN General Assembly affirmed it in July 2022. The right not only has substantive elements (clean air, safe water, non-toxic environments in which to live and work), but procedural ones as well: access to information, participating in decision-making, and access to justice and effective remedies. Aarhus is the instrument that puts the procedural half into practice.
As the Syrian government seeks to rebuild its relationship with its citizens, guaranteeing them the right to know, to be heard, and to seek redress on the matters that shape their lives is a serious place to begin.
Written by: Alreem Kamal, Legal Officer, Human Rights & Business Unit