Industrialized countries send millions of metric tonnes of used clothing, electronic equipment and other products to the Global South, and with them, the environmental and health costs tied to producing, consuming and disposing of those goods.
The environmental accountability that applied to these products back in Europe or North America doesn’t follow them to Ghana.
It’s a paradox rarely discussed: materials circulate globally, but environmental responsibility stops at the border.
When we drop off a used phone at a collection point, donate clothes to an organization or replace an obsolete computer, we often feel like we’ve done our part for the environment. But the story doesn’t end there. Many of these items begin a second life elsewhere, or simply reach the end of the road, sometimes thousands of kilometres away.
In her opening remarks, Jocelyne Landry Tsonang of the African Circular Economy Network pointed out that products often travel without the responsibility mechanisms, eco-taxes or funding that should come with them. The environmental and social costs associated with the end of a product’s life are then shifted to regions that generally have fewer resources to manage them.
Electronic waste is a particularly telling case. According to the Global E-waste Monitor 2024, the world generated 62 million metric tonnes of electrical and electronic waste in 2022. Yet only 22.3 per cent of this waste was officially collected and recycled through documented channels. The rest often follows paths that are difficult to trace, feeding into complex global markets.
As Canadian geographer Josh Lepawskydemonstrated in his 2018 book Reassembling Rubbish, electronic waste doesn’t just flow in a straight line from north to south. It moves through globalized networks where reuse, repair, material recovery and dismantling all intersect.
But even when these flows generate economic value, the environmental and health risks tend to stay concentrated in the regions where the products end up.
The uneven distribution of pollution
In several African cities, waste pickers extract copper, aluminum and other metals from used electronic devices. Their work helps recover resources that would otherwise be lost. However, these activities are frequently carried out without adequate protective equipment, under precarious conditions and with little institutional recognition.
This is what Canadian scholar Max Liboiron calls an unequal distribution of pollution. In her 2021 book Pollution is Colonialism, she argues that environmental harm is never spread neutrally. Some populations benefit while others absorb a disproportionate share of the fallout.
The textile industry provides another striking example. Every year, large volumes of used clothing are exported to second-hand markets in Africa, Latin America and Asia. When a significant portion of these shipments consists of low-quality clothing that is unsellable or difficult to recycle, the receiving countries are left with a waste management problem they did not create.
The Kantamanto market captures this perfectly. It’s often held up as a circular-economy success story thanks to the sheer scale of reuse and repair happening there. But it’s also stuck with mountains of clothing nobody will buy. The environmental cost of that clothing doesn’t fall on the markets that shipped it out — it falls on Ghana.
But as early as 2015, researchers writing in Economy and Society warned that debates on circularity tend to fixate on material flows and technical fixes, sidelining the social, political and territorial questions underneath.
This critique is particularly relevant for Global North-Global South trade. The articles compiled in the December 2024 special issue of VertigO, dedicated to the circular economy in the Global South, show that circular practices — far from being limited to the institutional models promoted in industrialized countries — are based on local systems of repair, reuse and recovery that have long existed, often outside formal frameworks.
The people who sustain these systems contribute to value creation, waste reduction and resource circularity, yet they are rarely factored into the financing or governance of the circular economy.
The issue therefore goes beyond recycling. It is about how responsibilities get distributed globally. The Basel Convention regulates the transboundary movement of hazardous waste, but plenty of gaps remain when it comes to used goods, textiles or electronics meant for reuse.
The environmental costs associated with products are shifted to the destination regions rather than borne by the markets that put them into circulation. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)
A better approach to responsibility
There are increasing calls for a broader definition of responsibility, one where the benefits of bringing a product to market, and the costs of its end of life, don’t simply stop at the border. A truly sustainable circular economy means circulating more than materials: it means circulating responsibility, funding and protections too.
None of this means shutting down the global trade in used goods. In many parts of the world, these flows support real economic activity, extend product life and create local jobs. The challenge is making sure financial and regulatory responsibility travels with the products themselves.
Canada isn’t immune to this problem. Our recycling, deposit-return and extended-producer responsibility systems are still built around national or provincial borders, even though the products we consume, and the waste they eventually become, are part of global supply chains.
Sorting our waste more carefully is a good first step. But a real shift toward circularity means asking where things go once they leave our homes, who’s responsible for them and what resources back that responsibility up. If our waste crosses borders, our accountability needs to as well.
It was around seven o’clock in the evening when we arrived at a church in the city of Hama, Syria, to attend the wedding of a friend. As guests gradually filled the courtyard, music began to echo through the building. One by one, the bride, groom, and their relatives entered the church accompanied by songs, applause and cheers.
After the religious ceremony concluded, groups of young men and women began performing Ewiha, a traditional wedding chant in Syria and the Levant. Their voices rose and fell in a rhythmic dialogue as verses praising the bride and groom were answered by equally poetic responses from across the room.
Each verse concluded with a joyful zalghouta – the high-pitched ululation that has accompanied celebrations across the Arab world for generations.
Inside the church in Hama for the wedding. Osman Bahadir Dincer
At first glance, there was nothing extraordinary about the wedding. Yet after more than a decade of war, the celebration felt like something more than a family gathering. It offered a powerful reminder that cultural traditions, social bonds, and everyday celebrations continue to endure, and that Syrians are trying to rebuild ordinary lives amid an uncertain transition.
But we were not in Syria to attend a wedding. As peace and conflict researchers, the three of us have long worked on questions of displacement, refugee return and post-conflict recovery; combining research on Syria with broader comparative perspective.
For this particular field trip, two of us, Bahadir and Zeynep, had spent the previous week travelling across Damascus, Rural Damascus, Aleppo and Raqqa observing firsthand how Syrians are navigating the country’s transition.
The journey, from June 1 to June 7, 2026, was part of a broader research programme that has involved more than 200 interviews over the past two years with Syrian returnees, internally displaced people, local officials, humanitarian workers and civil society representatives. These conversations, together with our wider research, have informed a series of peer-reviewed publications and policy reports on refugee return and reconstruction.
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For years, researchers had studied Syria from afar, unable to conduct fieldwork across government-controlled areas during the Assad era. Although we made several short visits to Damascus after the regime’s collapse, this was our first opportunity to travel across the country and observe firsthand how people were rebuilding their lives – and how Syria’s transition was unfolding beyond the headlines.
We encountered destroyed neighbourhoods standing alongside reopened shops. Abandoned industrial sites and damaged infrastructure coexisted with busy cafes and crowded restaurants. Communities continued to struggle with unemployment, rising prices and unreliable electricity while many people nevertheless spoke cautiously of hope and new beginnings.
The contrast captured something important about Syria today: hope and hardship coexist. So do recovery and destruction.
Between recovery and ruin
The scale of the challenge remains immense. More than 90% of Syrians live below the poverty line, and nearly 16.5 million people in Syria need humanitarian aid, alongside 2.5 million returnees.
Almost a quarter of the country’s housing stock has been damaged or destroyed, and reconstruction costs are estimated by the World Bank to exceed US$200 billion (around £150bn). Yet international support remains far below what is needed: as of mid-2025, the UN’s humanitarian response plan had received only a small fraction (14 %) of its required funding.
Two men talk in a devastated part of Yarmouk. Osman Bahadir Dincer
Food insecurity affects millions of people, while years of conflict have severely weakened the country’s productive capacity.
These figures help explain the scale of Syria’s crisis, but they reveal little about how it is experienced in everyday life. That became much clearer during our journey: in conversations over tea, on long drives between cities, while walking through damaged neighbourhoods, and in discussions with residents, civil society representatives, local officials and business owners. Across these encounters, one impression emerged again and again.
Many Syrians welcomed the political changes, but few believed that political change alone would improve their lives. Economic concerns dominated almost every conversation.
Basic infrastructure remains under severe strain, with large parts of the country’s electricity, water and sanitation networks still non-functional. More than two million children remain out of school, while a shortage of teachers continues to undermine the education system.
Yet the challenges facing Syria are not distributed evenly.
What struck us most was how fragmented people’s experiences of the war had become. The contrast between affluent neighbourhoods such as Abu Rummaneh and heavily damaged areas like Jobar in Damascus could hardly be greater. The availability of basic services and living standards vary dramatically across regions, cities and even neighbourhoods. In Abu Rummaneh, restaurants are full, cafés are crowded and daily life appears relatively stable. Nevertheless, as one local resident told us:
“We sit on the ashes, and everything remains extremely fragile.”
Elsewhere in Damascus, entire districts still bear the scars of war. We were struck by how many residents had not visited Jobar since the fall of the Assad regime, despite living only a few kilometres away.
For many, the district remained a place known through photographs rather than personal experience. We were equally surprised to find that many humanitarian workers, NGO staff and policy professionals based in Damascus rarely ventured beyond the city’s central neighbourhoods. In many ways, Jobar felt as distant to them as it did to visitors from abroad.
These uneven realities are further complicated by the ongoing return of displaced Syrians. During a brief break between meetings, the Syria country director of one of the largest humanitarian organisations operating across the country welcomed us into her office.
As we cooled down with glasses of water and cups of coffee, after walking through the summer heat of Damascus, our conversation turned to the growing pressures facing Syria’s cities. “Returns to cities lead to rising prices, higher utility costs, more expensive housing and additional pressure on already scarce services”, she explained. For many returnees, settling in the capital is currently more feasible than returning to their original communities.
Travelling through Jobar, Damascus. Osman Bahadir Dincer
The individual stories reveal what return looks like in practice. For example, Ahmad, our local research assistant, returned from Turkey to Damascus immediately after the fall of the Assad regime, even though his hometown is Raqqa. Unable to find suitable employment there, he now works as a sports trainer at a youth centre in Damascus. Despite earning an income, he cannot afford to rent an apartment and instead lives in a room within the sports complex.
We heard a similar story from a taxi driver in Damascus who had returned from Turkey five years earlier after years of displacement. Originally from Idlib, he picked us up outside our hotel and, as we crawled through Damascus traffic, told us that despite holding a university degree, driving his ageing taxi was the only steady work he had been able to find.
“This taxi is my only reliable source of income,” he said, tapping the dashboard. “It constantly needs repairs, but without it, I wouldn’t be able to support myself.”
By the time he dropped us off in Bab Touma, our short journey had become another reminder that returning home is only the first step toward rebuilding a life.
On the road across Syria
Our journey towards Rural Damascus, Aleppo, Raqqa and Hama began at 7:30 on a warm Damascus morning, when Ahmed – our driver, research assistant and guide for the days ahead – picked us up from our hotel. Although the city was only beginning to wake up, the summer heat was already building. Before continuing towards rural Damascus, we asked Ahmed to take a short detour through Jobar and Yarmouk.
Jobar, once one of the fiercest frontlines between government forces and rebel factions from 2013 to 2018, remains perhaps the most heavily damaged district of the capital. Entire blocks have been reduced to rubble.
As we walked through the shattered streets, Mohammed, a young activist who had recently returned to Syria and now worked in a local government office, reflected on what the neighbourhood had endured.
“Even though Jobar has always been part of Damascus, it was forgotten during the war and remained forgotten afterwards,” he told us. Gesturing towards the collapsed buildings around us, he continued:
“Since the fall of the regime, most of what you see has been done by people who have returned. They are clearing the rubble, repairing what they can and trying to rebuild their lives. But many Damascenes still haven’t set foot here. Jobar cannot truly recover unless the rest of Damascus comes back too – not only to rebuild it, but to see it, remember it and make it part of the city again.”
Yarmouk, once the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, presents a similarly sobering picture. While a small number of homes have been partially repaired, much of the neighbourhood remains scarred by destruction.
As we walked through the area, we noticed an elderly couple sitting quietly on plastic chairs outside one of the few inhabited houses, surrounded by rubble and the remnants of damaged buildings. They appeared to be watching the street – or what remained of it.
Two Yarmouk residents sitting on chairs maid ruins. Zeynep Sahin-Mencütek
The scene captured the contradictions of post-war Syria: life has returned, but often under conditions that would be difficult to imagine from a distance. For many residents, rebuilding has meant learning to live alongside the ruins rather than beyond them.
Travelling further into Eastern Ghouta and Harasta offers another stark reminder of the scale of destruction that still shapes much of the country.
Entering Ghouta. Osman Bahadir Dincer
Yet what is striking is not only the destruction, but the coexistence of destruction and recovery.
Beside a ruined apartment block, a small shop may have reopened to sell bread or construction materials. On streets where fighting once took place, children play or collect scrap to sell, while a father, mother and children ride together on a single motorcycle. Life is returning, often much faster than reconstruction. Small shops and derelict children’s playgrounds can be seen amid the war-damaged buildings.
A derelict playground. Osman Bahadir Dincer
After this brief but sobering visit to Rural Damascus, we set off for Aleppo. The journey itself proved almost as revealing as the cities themselves. Along the M5 highway, abandoned buildings, depopulated settlements and damaged industrial facilities stand as reminders of the conflict’s enduring legacy.
Yet signs of recovery appeared just as frequently: roadside fruit vendors selling seasonal produce, families stopping at newly reopened shops and a steady stream of traffic where ageing vehicles now shared the road with new cars. Ahmed smiled as he pointed to several recently imported SUVs passing us. “Before 2025,” he said, “you almost never saw new cars on Syrian roads. They’ve only started appearing recently.”
Near Hama, we stopped at a large roadside supermarket. Workers stocked shelves while families shopped for groceries. Ahmed insisted that we try a local milk-based dessert, a small gesture of hospitality that would be repeated throughout our journey. Such moments served as reminders that alongside destruction and hardship, everyday life and customs continue.
Aleppo: a broken city
The last time we had travelled through Aleppo countryside was in 2013. More than a decade later, we found ourselves approaching the city with a mixture of curiosity, anticipation and unease. We did not know what awaited us.
For years, Aleppo had existed for us through news reports, and the testimonies of those who had fled. The prospect of finally seeing, with our own eyes, a city that had occupied so much of our research and conversations over the years was both exciting and deeply humbling.
The city that greeted us reflected both its long history and the profound transformations brought about by the conflict. After checking into our hotel in the Aziziyeh district, we wasted little time before heading straight to the Old City. For years, we had heard about the devastation that had befallen Aleppo’s historic heart.
Walking through its narrow streets, it was difficult not to imagine the vibrant markets, workshops and cafés that had once animated these neighbourhoods. Although restoration has brought parts of the old souq and several historic landmarks back to life, large sections of the Old City remain scarred by war, making it impossible to ignore the scale of what Aleppo has lost.
A part of the Old City in Aleppo. Osman Bahadir Dincer
Together with Amr, an Aleppo native who guided us through the city, we spent hours walking through some of the hardest-hit districts, including parts of the Old City, Shaar, Hanano, Karm al-Jabal and Qadi Askar.
The scenes were overwhelming. Destroyed apartment blocks, mountains of rubble and damaged infrastructure remain an integral part of the urban landscape. Walking through the crowded streets with Amr, he pointed to a recently cleared road. “Many of the people returning to Syria are coming back to Aleppo,” he told us. “Many of these streets were blocked by rubble. People cleared them themselves. Otherwise, they couldn’t even get to their homes.”
We also visited Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafiyah following the political and military changes that took place earlier this year. Aleppo felt neither fully recovered nor frozen in the past.
As evening fell, the streets filled with families, cafés buzzed with conversation, and restaurants were packed with people enjoying the cooler hours after the summer heat. All this was in stark contrast with the destruction we had witnessed only hours earlier.
The buzz of Eastern Aleppo. Osman Bahadir Dincer
Raqqa and the weight of multiple conflicts
Early the next morning, after a simple breakfast of falafel and tea, we began the long drive east towards Raqqa with Ahmed.
Now in his late-thirties, Ahmed had grown up in Raqqa as one of 11 siblings before moving to Damascus for university. Like many Syrians of his generation, the war had disrupted much of what might otherwise have been an ordinary life. Years of displacement, uncertainty and constant upheaval had postponed plans that many of his peers elsewhere might have taken for granted – including getting married, something he now hoped to do in the near future.
Ahmed had not travelled this route, from Aleppo to Raqqa, for more than 15 years. Throughout the conflict, the route had been effectively closed to ordinary civilians as frontlines shifted and different armed groups controlled different stretches of the highway. As we drove further east, the journey became as much about his personal memories as about Syria’s recent history.
Every so often, he slowed the car to take a photograph. When we asked what had caught his attention, his answer was rarely political. “It just reminds me of my childhood,” he said with a smile. A weathered wall by the roadside, an abandoned building, or a familiar landmark would suddenly unlock another memory from a life interrupted by war.
As we passed an abandoned cement factory on the outskirts of Aleppo, he eased off the accelerator and looked towards the empty building: “Whenever we saw that factory, we knew we had arrived in Aleppo”, he recalled. After a brief pause, he looked at the complex and quietly added “now it is no longer working.”
A little later, he slowed down again, this time pointing towards an old roadside wall. Smiling, he said: “My brothers and I used to play games here whenever we travelled to Aleppo.” It was a simple memory, yet one that revealed how Syria’s roads hold far more than the traces of war.
The road from Aleppo to Raqqa. Osman Bahadir Dincer
As we approached Raqqa, the scenery began to change. The dry, dusty landscape gave way to greener fields nourished by the waters of the Euphrates. After hours on a highway that alternated between smooth stretches and cratered sections – forcing Ahmed to brake, accelerate and swerve repeatedly to avoid potholes – the sight of the river valley was refreshing.
Crossing the Euphrates over bridges hastily repaired, we entered what Syrians often refer to simply as east of the river – a vast region encompassing Raqqa, Deir al-Zor and Hasaka.
Only a few months earlier, reaching Raqqa had been significantly more complicated. Until recently, the city was controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-led coalition that governed much of north-eastern Syria separately from the authorities in Damascus. Now, following the SDF’s withdrawal from the city in early January, we were able to enter Raqqa freely.
Raqqa feels different from Damascus or Aleppo. It is not necessarily the most physically destroyed city, but it may be one of the most exhausted. Long before the war, Raqqa was among Syria’s least developed and a neglected province. It later became a centre of anti-regime mobilisation, endured years of conflict, served as the de facto capital of Islamic State (IS) and subsequently came under SDF administration.
The cumulative weight of these experiences is visible everywhere. Not only the people seem tired; the roads, buildings and public spaces carry a similar sense of exhaustion. Even the remains of the summer palace associated with Harun al-Rashid, the eighth-century Abbasid caliph, who ruled one of the most powerful empires of the medieval Middle East, appear worn by history.
Raqqa City. Osman Bahadir Dincer
Our visit to Raqqa coincided with Friday prayer, so we briefly went our separate ways. Bahadir joined our local host at one of Raqqa’s largest mosques, while Zeynep spent the time with a local family in their home.
The mosque was packed. One detail stood out immediately: the large number of visibly disabled worshippers, a quiet reminder of the human costs of years of war. Yet what left an even stronger impression came at the end of the sermon. The imam announced that donations would be collected after prayers for communities affected by recent flooding in Deir ez-Zor. Similar collections, he explained, were taking place in mosques across the country. The moment may seem unremarkable elsewhere, but in a country fragmented for years by conflict, competing authorities and shifting frontlines, the idea that communities across Syria were contributing to a common cause felt significant.
Meanwhile, Zeynep was sitting in the guest room of a modest apartment on the third floor of a six-story building, listening to the stories of two sisters who had returned to Raqqa.
Among two brothers and eight sisters, almost every major migration trajectory was represented. One sister, a middle-aged schoolteacher, had spent four years in Turkey before returning to reclaim her teaching position in Raqqa. Another had sought refuge in Jordan, she returned only a few months earlier, while her husband and son remained behind, hoping to join her later. Other siblings and relatives were scattered across Turkey, Germany and different parts of Syria. Yet despite the distance separating them, the family remained closely connected, constantly exchanging news, coordinating plans and talking about when they might be together again.
Looking around the room, one of the sisters smiled sadly. “Before the war,” she said, “this room was always full. There was hardly any space because our whole family gathered here. Now it’s just the two of us. The others have scattered like leaves in the wind. But, God willing, our mother will return soon. Then perhaps our brother, and one day our children and grandchildren too.”
For many Syrian families, displacement has become a long-term condition that generates complex patterns of mobility, transnational connection, return, separation, and reunion, continuing to shape everyday life long after the guns have fallen silent.
Once the visit to the mosque was over, we reunited to the sisters’ apartment, where Arabic coffee and homemade cake were waiting for us. After one last conversation and our farewells, we set off for Hama, where we had been invited to a wedding, before continuing to Damascus later that evening.
The road from Raqqa back toward western Syria revealed both change and continuity. Burnt-out military vehicles still lined parts of the route, while former checkpoints stood abandoned, reduced to empty plots of land and crumbling structures. Yet another feature caught our attention: long queues of ageing trucks moving slowly along the highway, a reminder that commerce and mobility are gradually returning.
Long queues of ageing trucks. Osman Bahadir Dincer
These signs of renewed movement, however, should not be mistaken for a broader economic recovery. Along much of the route, we saw little evidence that major industrial facilities, food-processing plants, or energy infrastructure were being restored at the scale required to revive local economies. This was particularly striking given the importance of agriculture and energy for Syria’s future recovery.
By midday, the heat had become almost unbearable, and we pulled over at a small roadside shop to buy water. The makeshift building stood alone beside the highway, surrounded by an otherwise empty landscape. Inside, most of the large room was bare. In one corner, a few tables displayed biscuits and wafers, while an old refrigerator held a handful of cold drinks.
A young shopkeeper, probably in his early twenties, came over to greet us. He first asked in Arabic where we were from. When we replied that we lived in Germany but were originally from Turkey, he immediately switched to fluent Turkish. Having recently returned after several years there, he was eager to share how much had changed since coming home. “Five months ago,” he said as he handed us bottles of water, “I would have been stopped at ten checkpoints to get here. Sometimes I would wait for hours. Economically, life may have been easier then. But we had no freedom of movement. Now I can travel without anyone stopping me.”
In fact, despite being foreigners, we experienced something of that change ourselves. Travelling with a Syrian colleague, and perhaps also because one of us was a woman, we passed checkpoint after checkpoint without ever being asked to stop. Each time, Ahmed simply slowed the car, exchanged a brief greeting with the soldiers and continued on our way.
One of the changes people mentioned most often was the simple ability to travel freely. Whether moving between cities or crossing from one neighbourhood to another, no longer being stopped, questioned, or delayed represented a profound shift after years in which movement had been shaped by checkpoints, frontlines and competing authorities. As one Syrian after another told us, “the road has become a road again.”
Freedom amid ruins
Many Syrians describe the post-Assad period as a “liberation”. Across different regions and social backgrounds, people repeatedly spoke about the end of fear, the ability to express opinions more openly and the possibility of imagining a different future. While political views remain diverse and uncertainties abound, there is nevertheless a widespread sense that a new chapter has begun.
What struck us was that people rarely explained this through abstract political language. Instead, they pointed to small changes in everyday life. In Damascus and Aleppo, many drew our attention to functioning traffic lights and police officers managing busy intersections. “Look around you,” they would say. “The traffic lights are working again. The police are back on the streets. These are small things, but they make people feel that life is becoming normal again.”
Around Raqqa, following the withdrawal of the SDF from parts of the region, residents expressed a similar sentiment. “For the first time in years,” one resident told us, “we feel free.” For many, this was not primarily a political statement but a reflection of how they experienced everyday life.
Hope was visible not only in what people told us, but also in what they were doing. In Aleppo, we visited a community centre where we met Esma, Mustafa and several other staff members working to support women, children and returning families through educational and rehabilitation programmes.
The building itself reflected Syria’s changing realities. Once the Baath Party’s youth centre, where generations of young Syrians were exposed to state ideology, it has recently been transformed into a place for learning, vocational training and community support.
Esma, who returned from Turkey despite holding Turkish citizenship, now teaches Turkish/Arabic at the centre. Mustafa, who returned from Germany, serves as its director, coordinating its educational and rehabilitation programmes. As we walked through the building together, moving from one classroom to another, we asked Esma why she had chosen to return despite having opportunities to remain abroad. Her answer came without hesitation: “My country is trying to stand up again. People here need us. If not now, then when we will contribute?” Standing beside her, Mustafa nodded quietly, a smile spreading across his face as she spoke. He did not add anything; he didn’t need to. His expression said he fully agreed.
We encountered similar positive scenes in Raqqa. Along the banks of the Euphrates, families gathered for picnics while young boys plunged into the fast-moving current without hesitation. Nearby, young men ferried visitors along the river in small boats fitted with rows of plastic chairs, offering short sightseeing trips. Vendors moved between the groups selling tea and coffee, while others washed their cars along the riverbank. Much of this everyday activity unfolded beneath the partially repaired bridge connecting the eastern and western sides of the city.
At first glance, it looked like an ordinary summer afternoon by the river. Yet there was something profoundly symbolic about people reclaiming a space that had once been synonymous with war.
Everyday life along the river. Osman Bahadir Dincer
Reconstruction projects in Syria often carry a significance that extends far beyond their practical purpose.
Driving back from Hama to Damascus late one evening, we found ourselves unexpectedly caught in a celebration. Earlier that day, President Ahmed al-Sharaa had officially reopened the Rastan Bridge, a strategic crossing that had remained closed for years. Only a few days earlier, we ourselves had been forced to bypass the bridge and drive through Rastan because the crossing was still inaccessible.
Now the atmosphere was entirely different. Families strolled together, young men waved Syrian flags, children ran between the crowds and motorcycles carrying two or three passengers moved slowly back and forth as people stopped to take photographs and celebrate on the bridge.
Yet the optimism we encountered during our travels was almost always accompanied by reminders of the challenges that remain. Across much of the country, the physical, economic and social consequences of war continue to shape everyday life.
Economic difficulties are only one dimension of the challenges Syrians continue to face. Another lies beneath the ground itself. As we were leaving Raqqa, Ahmed pointed towards the open fields stretching alongside the road. They looked calm and ready for cultivation, yet he shook his head. “Hardly a week passes without reports of new casualties,” he said quietly. “People still lose their lives because of mines.”
His remark immediately brought us back to a meeting a few days earlier at the United Nations Development Programme office in Aleppo. Standing in front of a large wall map of the city, one UNDP official traced neighbourhood after neighbourhood with his finger as he explained the scale of destruction and contamination. Large areas of farmland, villages and former frontlines, he told us, remain littered with landmines and unexploded ordnance, preventing people from farming, rebuilding, or even returning safely.
We heard the same concern echoed by government officials. During a meeting in Damascus, one ministry representative described mine clearance as one of the country’s most urgent priorities. “We need to clear the mines,” she told us. “They are everywhere in Syria.”
Returning to Syria is difficult
Our journey across Syria reinforced a finding that has emerged repeatedly from our research on refugee return: crossing the border is only the beginning. Experiences from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Iraq and other post-conflict settings show that return often remains partial, temporary, or circular when employment opportunities, public services, social trust and functioning institutions are absent.
Across these cases, return has proven to be a long-term process of reintegration. As one adviser involved in Syria’s return and recovery policies, told us: “We aim to bring 80 percent of Syrian refugees from Germany, as the German Chancellor requested. However, this requires the creation of 200,000 jobs and housing beforehand. Refugee returns should be conducted in a dignified manner to ensure they go back to safe areas, both psychologically and politically. For example, returning refugees should have access to a roof and non-mined environments.”
The dry, dusty landscape gave way to Raqqa’s greener fields nourished by the Euphrates. Osman Bahadir Dincer
The real question is no longer whether Syrians want to return, but whether the conditions exist for them to remain. With widespread housing shortages, limited employment, fragile public services and millions of people still relying on remittances from relatives abroad, many returnees risk exchanging one form of uncertainty for another. Without meaningful reconstruction and economic recovery, return is unlikely to mark the end of displacement – it may simply become another stage of it.
Across Europe, discussions about Syria increasingly focus on whether the conditions for refugee return are finally emerging. Yet our journey across the country suggests that these debates often overlook Syria’s current realities. Even government officials acknowledged that rebuilding homes, restoring infrastructure, reviving the economy and supporting displaced communities are already stretching the country’s limited resources.
Under these circumstances, a rapid increase in refugee returns could place additional pressure on communities that are themselves still struggling to recover. As one resident in Damascus put it “returnees will drown Syria” – not because their return is unwelcome, but because the country’s economy and institutions are simply yet not able to absorb large numbers of people.
Our journey ended shortly after 1am, when Ahmed dropped us off at our hotel in Damascus. In just a few hours, we would be boarding our flight back to Germany. Yet as we said our goodbyes, our thoughts returned once again to the wedding in Hama.
For a few hours, conversations shifted away from war, displacement, politics and economic hardship. Families gathered, children played, music filled the courtyard and guests celebrated the beginning of a new chapter in the lives of the bride and groom. It was not that people had forgotten Syria’s challenges.
Everyone present was fully aware of them. Rather, it was the determination to celebrate despite them.
Aerial view of wind turbines on a hilly landscape under a clear blue sky, promoting renewable energy. by Toàn Đỗ Công via Pexels. War in Iran continues to push governments, companies, and consumers toward greater interest in Renewables. It could even spur Europe to embrace ever more Renewables.
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War in Iran Continues to Drive Interest in Renewables
Floating solar panels manufactured by Hanwha Solutions Corp. on the Hapcheon Dam in Hapcheon, Gyeongsangnam-do province, South Korea, on Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2022. More than 92,000 solar panels floating on the surface of a reservoir are able to generate 41 megawatts, enough to power 20,000 homes; photo credit: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomber
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Six months after US-Israeli strikes disrupted Middle Eastern fossil fuel production and turned the Strait of Hormuz into a naval battleground, the world is getting a fuller picture of how the Iran war has reshaped the economics of energy.
A handful of new reports show how, by dramatically raising fossil-fuel prices, the conflict has also been pushing governments, companies and consumers towards renewable energy, with a clear set of winners and losers emerging.
Global fossil fuel importers have paid more than $330 billion in extra costs — an amount equal to Finland’s 2025 gross domestic product — since the war began on Feb. 28, according to data from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), a Helsinki-based nonprofit. Meanwhile, higher energy prices have been a boon to a handful of oil-and-gas producing countries outside the war zone.
Economies that had moved to ditch fossil fuels prior to the war have withstood the crisis better, too. In China, for example, renewable energy projects added since 2020 allowed the country to avoid nearly $8 billion in fossil fuel imports between March and July, CREA estimated.
These transformations could eventually have an effect on the environment: Overall, global greenhouse gas emissions were relatively contained during the first half of the year, inching up just 0.2% compared with the same period a year earlier, according to an early analysis of emissions through mid-year 2026 by the nonprofit Climate Trace.
“Renewables continue to grow. That does seem like good news,” says Ting So, lead analyst for Climate Trace. But he added that the volatility of disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz makes it hard to predict long-term trends.
Winners: Clean Tech and Non-Gulf Fossil-Fuel Producers
China has emerged as a beneficiary of the realignment, leveraging its dominance in green technology manufacturing at a time when soaring oil and gas prices are boosting interest in solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles.
Since the start of the conflict, China has logged five consecutive months of record clean tech exports measured in dollar terms, according to BloombergNEF. In July, Chinese carmakers sold more than half a million EVs and plug-in hybrids to overseas markets, a roughly 150% increase from a year earlier.
Oil-and-gas producers in North and South America have also reaped windfall profits. As buyers shunned Gulf suppliers, fossil fuel companies in the US, Canada and Latin America ramped up production.
While a ceasefire could erode wartime supply premiums, researchers expect some of these market shifts to persist. “The boost to Latin America’s mining sector could remain,” said Rafael Rabioglio, a BNEF analyst, in the report. As high fuel costs accelerate global electrification, demand for critical minerals such as copper and lithium will benefit major producers including Chile and Peru in the long term.
Losers: Gulf States and Import-Dependent Regions
In the Persian Gulf, drone strikes and explosions have damaged key facilities, including Saudi Arabia’s largest oil refinery and a key liquefied natural gas export terminal in Qatar. Coupled with shipping bottlenecks, initial export losses across the Gulf averaged nearly $2 billion per day in March, according to an estimate from Rice University.
Beyond lost revenue, the war also damaged as much as $58 billion worth of energy infrastructure, which requires costly repairs, according to an April estimate by consulting firm Rystad Energy. The conflict also threatens to stall the region’s transition into a greener economy. “The war has driven up the cost of debt in the region, undermining clean power project economics in the near term,” BNEF analysts said in their report.
Import-dependent economies like Japan and South Korea, meanwhile, are suffering collateral damage. The two Asian nations, which depended on shipments through the Strait of Hormuz for most of their oil supplies prior to the Iran war, had no choice but to absorb higher fuel prices. In Africa, where many countries are net importers of refined oil products, the soaring prices have fueled a broader economic crisis. Ethiopia, for instance, recently experienced currency selloffs, forcing the country to draw down billions of dollars in its foreign exchange reserves to defend the weakening birr.
Accelerated Transition
The burden of higher energy prices has fallen disproportionately on developing economies. Poorer nations spent an additional 1% of their GDP absorbing the price shock, CREA found. That’s more than double the economic drag experienced by wealthier states.
As they seek to break up with fossil fuels, African nations are scrambling to add renewable energy. The region as a whole imported 37% more solar equipment from China in the first half of 2026 than in the same period last year, BNEF data showed. The current boom has spread across the entire continent, from South Africa to Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo and Egypt.
“In countries where consumers are not being well shielded from higher fuel prices, they are moving very quickly to adjust their energy consumption pattern,” said Ethan Zindler, a BNEF analyst.
That same trend is also happening across developing Asia. For instance, in the Philippines — where initial fuel shortages prompted the government to mandate a four-day workweek to save on energy — demand for solar products has surged. In March, the country’s imports of Chinese solar equipment jumped 262% year-over-year.
EV adoption has accelerated, too. Monthly EV sales almost doubled in the Philippines and Indonesia in June and July compared to the same period in 2025, according to BNEF. In India, monthly passenger EV sales reached 30,000 units in those two months, up from fewer than 20,000 units last year.
In the first half of 2026, slight emissions reductions by China and the US, the world’s largest polluters, were balanced out by increases in India and Brazil, the Climate Trace analysis found.
At the same time, fears that this year’s energy-market disruptions would lead to a major near-term increase in coal-fired power did not become a reality, according to the results. Instead, over the first six months of the year, renewable energy actually expanded more quickly, So says.
“That’s a positive development that maybe not everyone thought” would happen, he says.
Exterior view of Babel Restaurant featuring distinctive stone architecture and lush greenery. by Maryam Afana via Pexels
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UNESCO Director-General reaffirms the Organization’s commitment to Lebanon
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During his first official visit to Lebanon, UNESCO Director-General Khaled El-Enany met with President Joseph Aoun, and members of the Lebanese Government to review UNESCO’s activities across education, sciences, culture, communication and information and discuss priorities to advance recovery efforts and long-term resilience.
18 August 2026
Last update:20 August 2026
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As Lebanon continues to face evolving emergencies UNESCO stands in solidarity with its people and recognizes Lebanon’s extraordinary cultural heritage. Our role is to work alongside Lebanese partners, guided by nationally defined priorities, to respond to urgent needs and advance sustainable development. Through our joint initiatives on education, heritage protection and information integrity, we aim to expand opportunities and social cohesion, and support an inclusive recovery that contributes to lasting peace for all
During his visit, the Director-General met with President Joseph Aoun, Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, Minister of Culture Ghassan Salamé and esteemed members of the Government. The visit also saw the signing of a new Memorandum of Understanding with the Government of Lebanon, establishing a strengthened framework for cooperation through 2029.
Expand Education Recovery Efforts
Thanks to a grant from the Global Partnership for Education (USD 1 million), UNESCO will reinforce government-led efforts to strengthen national education planning and build a more resilient education system. This new contribution from GPE brings UNESCO’s targeted assistance to emergency education response and recovery in Lebanon to USD 1.8 million, reinforcing efforts to restore learning and strengthen national capacities across the education sector.
During a visit to Mohamad Shamel Public Mixed Elementary School in Beirut, the Director-General met students and teachers participating in UNESCO-backed recovery activities. The visit highlighted the flagship six-week Summer Learning Programme, which is helping students catch up on learning missed due to the conflict and displacement, while providing psychosocial support ahead of the new school year.
Since 2023, UNESCO has trained over 4,000 teachers in digital and flexible learning approaches, reaching more than 10,000 students in the most affected regions.
Increasing efforts for Lebanon’s heritage
The Director-General visited the World Heritage site of Tyre recently added to the List in Danger, where he announced USD 100,000 from the Heritage Emergency Fund. This will advance emergency support to assess damage, stabilize vulnerable structures, protect archaeological remains and mosaics, train young Lebanese heritage professionals, and underpin community-led recovery efforts to safeguard and revitalize one of Lebanon’s most iconic cultural sites.
At Khan Al-Askar in Tripoli, the Director-General acknowledged the potential of the site to serve employment-oriented skills development and TVET programmes. The Director-General visited also the World Heritage Property Rachid Karami International Fair and underscored UNESCO’s support for the conservation of this iconic modern architectural site including through the implementation of a Conservation Management Plan, funding for the restoration of the Water Tower (76.000 USD), and capacity-building for national experts.
Commitment to information integrity and media freedom
The Director-General welcomed the launch on 13 August of the National Campaign against Hate Speech, led by the Ministry of Information, with the support of UNESCO. He also announced a new contribution from the LOOPS Foundation to the Libraries for Resilience initiative. Together with the MCN Build Foundation and Norway, the initiative has now mobilized USD 650,000 to expand access to reliable information, strengthen community resilience, and enhance public library services across Lebanon.
The Director-General also acknowledged the adoption of a new Media Law by the Lebanese Parliament. UNESCO stands ready to continue supporting related reforms and implementation of the law in order to ensure freedom of expression, media independence, and the safety of journalists in line with international human rights standards.
Partnerships and call for international mobilization
The Director-General thanks all of UNESCO’s partners and donors, and reiterates UNESCO’s appeal for increased international mobilization for the new UNESCO Action Plan for Lebanon (2026–2028), which structures UNESCO’s response around three pillars: monitoring, coordination, the provision of emergency assistance to lay the ground for sustainable recovery, and long-term prosperity.
The mangrove forests of Qeshm Island off the coast of southern Iran. Nmarandi / Shutterstock
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Oil slicks moving along Iran’s southern coast have reached the Hara mangrove forests of Qeshm Island. Iranian authorities say the extent of the contamination is still being assessed and the source of the oil pollution has not yet been established. But several oil spills have been detected in the region since the war between the US and Iran began.
The Hara forests lie in the Khuran Strait, which separates Qeshm Island from mainland Iran. This waterway is close to the Strait of Hormuz – one of the most strategically important marine corridors on Earth. The Strait of Hormuz is normally discussed through the vocabulary of geopolitics: barrels of oil, shipping lanes, energy prices and global trade.
But beneath that geopolitical map lies another map that receives far less attention. The Strait of Hormuz and its surrounding waters are home to mangroves, coral reefs, seagrass beds, fisheries and coastal communities. They also provide the seawater upon which some of the world’s most water-stressed societies depend.
The Strait of Hormuz is not only an energy chokepoint. It is an ecological chokepoint. And prolonged conflict exposes both at the same time.
An oil slick on open water is a serious pollution event. But oil entering a mangrove ecosystem creates a different problem. Mangroves occupy the boundary between land and sea, with dense root systems that slow water movement and trap sediments.
The same characteristics that make these ecosystems extraordinarily productive also make them effective traps for pollutants.
While oil can be removed from the water surface, oil that penetrates shorelines and fine sediments can be much more difficult to address. Contamination can affect roots and seedlings and expose organisms living in or feeding on these sediments to pollution. Fish and birds can be affected through ecological pathways extending beyond the visibly contaminated trees.
Qeshm should also not be viewed in isolation. Earlier in the war, another oil slick near Kharg Island in the northern Persian Gulf was tracked. Satellite imagery indicated that currents were carrying contamination through the Khuran Strait towards the mangroves.
Researchers using satellite observations have also reported a marked increase in the frequency and extent of oil pollution in the Gulf since the beginning of the war. This is where the environmental significance of prolonged conflict becomes much larger than any individual spill.
What needs to happen now
The first priority in Qeshm must be containment. Preventing additional oil from entering the mangroves is far more effective than attempting to remove it once it has penetrated a complex inter-tidal environment.
However, containment alone is insufficient. Authorities need to establish the source and chemical characteristics of the contamination, map its spatial extent, combine field observations with satellite monitoring and sample water and sediments.
They will also need to establish baseline conditions in affected and unaffected areas and monitor mangrove condition, aquatic organisms and other ecological indicators over time.
Such efforts may themselves be constrained by the war. Conflict can make scientists, environmental agencies and emergency-response teams less able to reach the places where intervention is most urgently needed.
The response must also avoid causing additional damage. Following the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off the coast of Alaska, high-pressure hot-water washing removed stranded oil but also caused substantial additional damage to shoreline organisms and habitats.
In mangroves, where roots and sediments are particularly sensitive to physical disturbance, similarly aggressive interventions can do more harm than good. Most importantly, monitoring of the Hara mangrove forests cannot stop when the coastline looks clean.
There is a temptation during war to treat environmental damage as secondary: something to assess after questions of military strategy, diplomacy, energy supply and economic loss have been addressed. That hierarchy is difficult to defend.
Environmental systems are infrastructure. Mangroves protect coastlines and sustain marine ecosystems. Fisheries support livelihoods and food security. Soils support agriculture. Aquifers store water and coastal waters feed desalination plants.
Healthy ecosystems provide forms of resilience that become more – not less – important during periods of political and economic instability. Destroying or degrading them thus creates liabilities that can persist long after military operations have ended.
And unlike a bridge, pipeline or building, an ecosystem cannot necessarily be reconstructed. A mature mangrove forest is the product of biological processes that unfold over time. Lost ecological functions may take years to recover, and some changes may prove difficult to reverse.
This is why what is happening at Qeshm deserves attention well beyond Iran. The question is not whether this particular oil contamination represents an ecological catastrophe. We do not yet have the evidence to make that judgment. The more important question is what the event is telling us.
It is telling us that in a region where enormous volumes of hydrocarbons, dense maritime traffic, critical water infrastructure and fragile coastal ecosystems occupy the same narrow geography, environmental risk cannot be separated from geopolitical risk.
If the Iran conflict continues, the probability of further accidents, infrastructure damage, pollution and interrupted environmental management will increase. Some consequences, such as burning vessels, blackened coastlines or dead vegetation, will be immediately visible.
But others will accumulate quietly – in sediments, soils, groundwater, food webs and stressed ecosystems. It is these consequences that may ultimately prove harder to repair. While all wars eventually end, their environmental consequences do not necessarily follow the same timetable.
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