2024: A Bad Year for the Environment

2024 was a bad year for the planet. The international community, once united in its commitment to protect the environment, seems to have lost its way. High hopes for a landmark international agreement to reduce plastic pollution were dashed when diplomats meeting in Korea failed to reach a consensus. Attempts to translate global biodiversity pledges into meaningful action also flailed during negotiations in Colombia. And despite record-breaking temperatures and a steady rise global carbon emissions, the annual UN climate convention (again hosted and overseen by an oil-producing country) yielded anemic outcomes.

Israel has often found solace in the mantra: “Think globally, act locally.” As a small country, perhaps the best we can do to contribute to the world’s sustainability efforts is preserve our special corner of earth. Unfortunately, when Israel acted locally at all in 2024, it largely was to the detriment of its environment.

The Ministry of Environmental Protection, a chronically underfunded agency, still always prided itself on the professionalism of its workforce. Yet, two years into the tenure of Likud Minister Idit Silman, an exodus of the agency’s leading experts took place at an alarming pace. A half-hour exposé on Channel 12 revealed troubling patterns of cronyism—if not outright corruption at the ministry — with veteran staff voicing frustrations about the minister’s political considerations consistently overriding environmental concerns.

The environmental ministry’s impotence was particularly  evident in December when the Israeli government overturned the ministry’s policy mandating “zero-additional risk” for the Gulf of Eilat’s sensitive ecosystem.  Capitulating to pressure from KATZA – the government owned oil shipping company — the number of tankers allowed to unload their oil in Eilat was dramatically increased.  The government chose short-term profits and increased petroleum trade with Europe, over a prudent policy that significantly reduces the risk of ecological disaster in the Red Sea.

The KATZA infrastructure is fifty years old, poorly maintained and notorious for its frequent, egregious oil spills. It is outrageous that the vast majority of the new oil being unloaded at Israel ports and piped across the country is not even intended for Israeli users. Rather than joining the world’s transition to a low-carbon future, Israel has chosen to function as a global gas station.

Indeed, 2024 will be remembered, environmentally, as the year when the Israeli government decided to opt out of its climate commitments.  In 2016, Yuval Steinitz, then Minister of Energy first declared that Israel would soon put an end to coal-fire electricity generation – for many years the cornerstone of Israel’s polluting energy policies. The phase-out began, but the present Netanyahu government grew increasingly evasive as the 2025, coal moratorium target date grew closer. And this summer, this critical step was put on hold.

The government’s brazen  disregard for the planet’s climate crisis was on display for months while the Knesset’s Interior and Environment Committee  in public hearings sought to upgrade a  highly unambitious climate law.  Even the modest obligations which the Ministry of Environmental Protection proposed were too much for the Ministry of Finance that time and again imposed its will on the hapless environmental ministry. From pitifully low 2030 targets for carbon emission reductions (at 27% – about half the average cuts of other countries) to a languid and unreliable timetable for implementation, the proposed legislation may be the most feeble climate legislation ever considered by a parliament in the Westernworld. The law is so feeble that the country’s green organizations and political leadership eventually grew unified in their opposition to it, concluding that it would be better if such an embarrassing statute wasn’t enacted at all.

Israel remains a solid waste basket case.  Recycling rates are shabby – with only 20% of garbage recycled. After the government cancelled the tax on single-use plastic plates and cutlery, demand for these disposables increased by 25%.

In Israel’s Arab communities, organized crime has come to dominate trash collection and landfilling.  It is cheaper to dump rubbish on the side of the highway or burn it than it is to pay the tipping fee at garbage dumps.  When Dr. Hussein Tarbiah, director of the regional environmental agency around Sakhnin refused to cooperate with this shameful, institutionalized littering, he was shot point-blank in front of his office. Only a medical miracle averted Israel’s first environmental assignation.

But the message go through to Arab mayors who routinely face death threats if they do not play ball with the garbage gangsters.  Many have decided that cleaning up the trash is simply not worth it.  Just as police Minister Itamar Ben Gvir has been generally disinterested in confronting the record murder rates in Israel’s Arab communities – he seems even less concerned about the burning of their garbage trucks by lawless thugs. The ongoing environmental terrorism has turned Arab towns into solid waste disasters.

All of this bad news from 2024 does not even mention the massive ecological damage caused by the war: 340,000 dunams of woodlands burned, primarily a result of Hezbollah’s relentless attacks.  Many of the trees will grow back, but the charred and decimated Galilee landscape is a grim reminder that the creatures and plants of the country were unable to run to bomb shelters when the sirens went off. The Iron Dome does not even try to take down rockets destined for open spaces. Nature, it seems, is on its own.  And so, Israel’s steadily declining wildlife populations took an even bigger hit this year.

It is a well-known irony that environmental organizations tend to have their best years in garnering donations when they are ruled by environmentally obtuse and harmful governments. Israel is no exception. As things grew worse, green NGOs have stepped up, with veteran stalwart warriors at the Society for Protection of Nature, Israel Union for Environmental Defense (Adam Teva V’din) and Green Course along with dozens of others green groups fighting environmental destruction in the courts and in the streets.

To continue to be effective, Israel’s environmental movement must enjoy the tools which enlightened democracies grant their civil societies.  Recently, cabinet ministers have begun to resuscitate the “judicial overhaul” (or more precisely “the attack on Israeli democracy”).  In the long-term, their efforts to eviscerate Israel’s legal system may be the present government’s most damaging anti-environmental initiative.

There have been many critical cases where ecological progress can be attributed to an activist Israeli court’s willingness to intervene and require the government, as well as polluters, to comply with environmental legislation. Even more often, the very threat of the public turning to the courts for environmental back-up has been sufficient to stymie reckless government initiatives or force polluters to clean up before they are sued. When Israel’s courts are weakened, so is its environment.

One could make a legitimate argument that when countries are at war, they have neither the resources nor the bandwidth to prioritize environmental values. But this rationalization cannot go on forever.  After so many gave their lives fighting for this country, the least we can do to honor their memory is keep the countryside clean and healthy . Now that 2025 has arrived, we all must ensure that this past year remains an anomaly. We all must ensure that the harmony between the people of Israel and the land of Israel is restored.