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Atlantic Council Panel: Reducing pollution and carbon emissions is critical to Iraq’s prosperity

The private sector, in partnership with the government, will play an important role in encouraging a culture of sustainability in their operations and effecting change

Iraq’s worsening pollution and carbon emissions are having a significant impact on the country but a growing focus by the government to harness the country’s natural gas resources and use them more efficiently promises to significantly improve conditions, Majid Jafar, CEO of Crescent Petroleum told the Atlantic Council. The private sector, in partnership with the government, will play an important role in encouraging a culture of sustainability in their operations and effecting change.

“Iraq is facing the global challenge of climate change, but also faces a number of specific local issues including water shortages and the issue of air, land, and water pollution that must be tackled,” Jafar told the audience gathered for the second Atlantic Council Iraq Initiative Conference in Washington, DC. The conference, titled ’Balancing global engagement and domestic growth: Iraq's future in an evolving landscape’, sought to highlight Iraq’s efforts to tackle environmental challenges and ways of solving them.

“We are very pleased to see the government of Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani treating natural gas as a priority, particularly for power generation and for economic growth and development,” Jafar said. “But also, how we as an industry produce gas is important; it must be cleaner and decarbonised."

Jafar was joined on the panel by ambassador Fareed Yaseen, former Iraq ambassador to Washington and now climate envoy of the Republic of Iraq; Elfatih Eltahir: H M King Bhumibol, professor of civil and environmental engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Mishkat Al Moumin, former Iraqi minister of environment and executive director of Envirolution. The panel explored strategies to mitigate and combat the impacts of rising temperatures, water scarcity, and extreme weather events that threaten the country ‘s economic output, electricity supply, and food security that have resulted in climate refugees and the destruction of natural and cultural heritage.

Ambassador Yaseen highlighted that Iraq has a renewed focus on tackling climate change and will host a pavilion at the upcoming COP28 meeting in Dubai to underscore its commitment. The panelists welcomed the UAE’s hosting of the COP meeting as an important opportunity for Iraq and other regional countries to enhance cooperation and advance progress in policies to address climate change.

Much of the environmental improvements will be accomplished in partnership between the private and public sector. Jafar pointed for example to the impact of Crescent Petroleum’s natural gas operations in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, which have enabled cleaner, more affordable electricity for millions of people, while allowing the region to avoid a cumulative 50 million tonnes of CO2 emissions over the past 15 years by replacing liquid fuels with natural gas, equivalent to removing one million cars from the roads. The company this year signed three new contracts for blocks in Diyala and Basra Governorates and aims to replicate the positive impacts in these new areas.

“All of these related challenges have to be managed, and the focus must be on building institutional capacity to tackle them,” Jafar said. “The private sector has a duty in this to bring international best practices and instill a culture of health and safety, as well as environmental awareness. Then the government must revise the regulations and enforce them."