Researchers have recently begun to measure military impacts on climate change. Such efforts have gained more attention since Russia’s war on Ukraine, as researchers seek to numerate climate impacts relating to the destruction of buildings, infrastructure and agricultural lands, the burning of fighter jet fuel, the production, delivery and deployment of armaments, and movements of displaced populations. This work is both important yet challenging, as military emissions is often excluded from global climate reporting despite contributing an estimated 5.5% of annual global emissions.
From this perspective, Israel’s near total devastation of Gaza isn’t just a human tragedy, but can be seen as an attack on the climate. Building on work that sought to model carbon emissions resulting from the Russia-Ukraine war, researchers have begun to examine the climate impacts of Israel’s war on Gaza. Researchers at the University of Edinburgh Business School have contributed to these estimates by advancing a more comprehensive approach to calculating both the carbon emissions and work required to collect and process the estimated 32 million tonnes of debris resulting from destroyed and damaged buildings (42 million tonnes if roads and other infrastructure are included).
The team focused their efforts on the rubble caused by destroyed and damaged buildings because no one had yet made these calculations, and because undertaking these calculations provide some indication into the time, work and equipment required to aid future reconstruction efforts. Using open-data satellite imagery, the team created algorithms to first calculate the likely amount and location of building debris, and from there, the requirements needed to move, transport, and process it. Complexities such as clearing the rubble of asbestos, unexploded bombs, the sensitive task of addressing human remains, recycling certain elements, labour costs, machinery outputs and road structures were factored into the calculations.
With this paper, we wanted to offer something more comprehensive and concrete. It was important to us to be offering a paper that provided a roadmap to not simply clearing the destruction found in Gaza, but also to rebuild what has been lost.Dr Abdelnour
We have estimated the carbon emissions arising from transporting building debris to nearby disposal sites, and from crushing uncontaminated concrete rubble into finer aggregates for reuse in building blocks, roadway repair, and shoreline protection.
To clear the estimated 32 million tonnes of debris from destroyed and damaged buildings in this manner would require the equivalent mileage of driving more than six-hundred times around the earth’s circumference, and would output over 55-thousand tonnes of carbon-dioxide-equivalent.
The study was undertaken with Nicholas Roy, who recently graduated from the University of Edinburgh and is now studying at the University of Oxford, and was funded by a Small Impact Grant provided by the University of Edinburgh Business School. The methods advanced in the paper have been deemed innovative by the UN Environment Programme, who have reached out to the team indicating they intend to incorporate the approach in ongoing and future work.
Samer Abdelnour is our Senior Lecturer in Strategic Management and Programme Director MSc Global Strategy & Sustainability.