Healthy Environments & Sustainable Livelihoods

The ecological challenges that our beautiful planet faces are overwhelming. For the people of the Middle East, the brunt of climate change and the resulting ecological disaster is acutely felt.

In Palestine, most of the environmental challenges are a direct result of the occupation, preventing a sustainable and equitable management of resources. Evidence of the ugly political realities stretch cross the land of Palestine, cutting off communities from each other, their natural resources and depleting what remains. Restrictions on movement and goods make it hard for Palestinian communities to efficiently utilize the limited resources available to them and to remove waste ecologically.

In Lebanon, years of government neglect, a dearth of public waste management services and the resulting widespread resort to unregulated trash burning has resulted in environmental devastation and pollution that threatens public health. The economic crisis has only made the situation worse.

Jordan, like many of its neighbors, faces rapidly dwindling and contested water resources along with a growing population.

For each of these communities, responding to these challenges requires commitments from governments, civil society, and international engagement to strengthen investments in renewable resources and sustainable solutions.

Traveling through Palestine’s West Bank, in village after village, there is tangible evidence of Anera’s legacy of community-driven projects:

• Irrigation networks that reuse treated wastewater in Jenin and Ramallah,
• rain-harvesting cisterns,
• farm-to-market roads
• and terracing.

You can see how we’re advising families on home gardening – all because of your support.

In Gaza, and now the West Bank too, Anera-provided rooftop gardens and family greenhouses are a lifeline – extending the growing season to year-round while providing more growing space and using less water.

Infrastructure that connects families to reliable sewage systems and prevents flooding improves public health. Increasing the capacity of Gaza’s stormwater basins helps replenish Gaza’s aquifer. Anera-provided solar technology powers desalination units and agricultural water pumps. All helping to conserve Gaza’s scarce water resources and provide safe water for drinking and farming.

In response to the Lebanese economic and waste crisis, we’ve exported agricultural technologies developed by Anera agronomists in Palestine to our programs in Lebanon. Hydroponic rooftop gardens and greenhouse farms are some of the ways Anera is working with communities in Lebanon to sustainably improve food security and create jobs.

Anera’s solid waste management and recycling program is also cleaning up Lebanon’s environment while supporting livelihoods and improving public health. Much as in Palestine we are utilizing solar technology in Lebanon to support health clinics.

Looking ahead, Anera is starting to work with refugee communities in Jordan on developing rooftop gardens and greenhouse farming.

Some of the families we help do not have much more than the ground beneath their feet and the air around them. But YOU, the Anera community, are providing them with the tools to make the most out of what they do have and to build dignified livelihoods for themselves.

While political dynamics may appear stuck for many years, decades even, before a breakthrough, life, and preparing for the future, cannot wait. Managing these resources sustainably now, will help ensure that future generations can enjoy the fruits of this soil and their land.

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