Environment or development: Can Kurdish cement boom balance both?

SULAIMANI, Kurdistan Region – The Kurdistan Region’s cement industry is booming. Every day, six plants churn out some 38,630 tons of cement, a constituent of concrete that is the building block of the modern age. 

The country is hungry for cement. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) is spending $420 million on badly needed infrastructure projects – dams, roads, power grids, bridges – “creating the foundations for a stronger, more prosperous Kurdistan,” in the words of Prime Minister Masrour Barzani. Kurdish cement is also rebuilding Iraq’s cities that were destroyed in the war against the Islamic State (ISIS). 

Made from limestone blasted out of Kurdistan’s mountains, the cement boom is great for business and development, but it comes at the expense of the environment. For every ton of cement produced, approximately an equal ton of carbon dioxide is pumped into the atmosphere.  Families living under the dust clouds of the cement factories have higher rates of respiratory illnesses and cancer. 

Some $2.75 billion has been put into the cement industry in capital costs alone, according to figures from the Kurdistan Region’s Investment Board. And it’s just beginning. “Due to the urbanization of the region and the economic stimulation, the cement industry in KRI [Kurdistan Region of Iraq] is expected to grow rapidly,” predicted engineering economist Nabaz Khayyat, a former professor at the University of Kurdistan-Hawler, via email on February 9. 

“Industrialization from privatization will be a driving engine of KRI economic growth and diversification. [The] cement industry can be considered as such an enhancing factor” that will add to gross domestic product (GDP), he said. 

Mass Group Holding operates the largest cement factory in the Kurdistan Region. Its three production lines in Sulaimani’s Bazian area can produce as much as 6 million tons of cement annually. Their product is going into the new offices of the Central Bank of Iraq and the American consulate in Erbil. In operation since 2010, the firm weathered the financial crisis of 2014-2017, “but now it’s growth again… day-by-day it grows more,” said Saif Saad Majeed, head of quality control, in an interview on February 12. He predicted 2020 will be their best year yet. 

But while the cement industry thrives, the planet is in trouble. Cement accounts for as much as eight percent of global CO2 output. In terms of contribution to global warming worldwide, it is second only to the oil and gas sector, the Kurdistan Region’s main source of money. 

The year 2019 was the second hottest on record and average temperatures for the past decade have hit unprecedented levels. The top five risks facing the world today are, for the first time, all environmental, according to a report published annually ahead of the World Economic Forum in January. They include extreme weather events, failure of governments and businesses to adapt to climate change, human-made environmental disasters, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, and major natural disasters. 

As a regional entity, the Kurdistan Region is bound by international obligations entered into by the Iraqi federal government. Iraq has signed but not ratified the 2015 Paris climate agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions and limit the rise in global temperature to below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.  

Ahead of the Paris meeting, Iraq published its target to cut emissions by 14 percent by 2035 – one percent financed domestically and 13 percent contingent on receiving international assistance. In announcing that pledge, Iraq acknowledged that the country will be drastically affected by climate change and yet is one of the least-prepared nations in the world to handle the problem.

If the cement industry is going to meet Paris targets, it will need to reduce emissions by at least 16 percent by 2030. 

Mass Group Holding is always looking for ways to reduce its emissions, but it’s not the top priority in the Kurdistan Region at this time. Instead, development should be the focus, according to Majeed. “Now, here, in this time, we still need to build more and more. Really, our country needs to build more and more. Now we are in a growth stage,” he said. 



Mass’ cement factory is one of several located in the Bazian area, stretched along the road approaching Sulaimani city. Many industries have operations here, “and they don’t care about the environment,” said Polla Khanaqa, geologist and director of the Sulaimani-based Kurdistan Institute for Strategic Studies and Scientific Research (KISSR). 

Khanaqa assembled environmental, biological, and medical experts from his team to talk about the impact of the cement industry on a rainy January 23 in the offices of their institute. 
 
“The main issue in these factories is the air pollution, because the particle size, the dust, and that’s one of the factors that affects global warming and climate change,” explained Ali Salih, an expert in environmental technology. 
 
The factories’ location so close to people’s homes is also a problem. Researchers at KISSR have documented rising rates of cancer in the area that they link directly to industry. 

Nestled at the base of a hill about 20 kilometres outside of Sulaimani are a couple dozen houses that make up the village of Chaqizh Saroo. Hakeem Osman Majid was born here in 1969. He is now the village chieftain (mukhtar). 

Standing on his concrete terrace under the dazzling but chilly midday sun on January 25, Majid reminisced about the farmers’ fields that stretched up the hillside alongside a grove of some 50,000 sumac trees during his youth. Today, his view is of a hillside stripped of its green cover to expose the rock hard underbelly. It is an open pit mine for the Tasluja Cement Company, the factory of which lies just a stone’s throw from the village. 



Majid estimates that the hills he grew up playing on are now 200-300 metres shorter and most of the trees are gone. “Now there’re only three sumac trees left,” he said.

The village lanes are smooth concrete, built by their neighbour, which also gave money to construct a road to the village. But villagers say it’s not enough compensation for the years of problems that arise from living in the shadow of industry. Blasting at the mine sends tremors that shake the houses, cracking walls and scaring children. Dust from the factory is harming the farmers’ fields, animals, and the people’s health. 

These effects are also felt on the other side of the hill where the town of Tasluja is expanding up the slope. Jawhar Zozan, 35, grew up in Tasluja. When she married 10 years ago, she moved with her husband to a house on the hill that abuts the mine. She has chronic breathing problems. 
 
“Of course it harms us,” she says of the pollution, standing on the muddy lane outside her home, with a baby in her arms and a toddler wrapped around her leg. “Every factory in populated areas has an effect.”


 
The cement factories and industries are closely monitored by Sulaimani’s environmental directorate, headed by Diyar Sheikh Garib. Of all the industries he regulates, cement is one of the best. None of the 51.5 million dinars ($43,200) in fines he imposed last year were on the cement industry. “As we have seen, cement factories are the good factories we have with respect to the environmental guidelines obeyance. But still, whatever procedure they take, cement factories are an environmental polluting factory, because you cannot control CO2,” he said in an interview on January 23. 

At TCC and its sister factory Gasin Cement Company (GCC), both operated by Faruk Holdings, as well as at Mass, they use pollutant-intensive heavy fuel oil to reach the high temperatures necessary in their kilns. 

The factories’ neighbours are not happy under an industrial cloud, but their biggest complaint is that while they suffer the negative consequences, they don’t see an economic benefit. They would be more willing to accept the factories if it meant they had better jobs, nicer roads and homes, and cash in their pockets. 

Their dilemma echoes a global debate about how much developing nations should have to shoulder the responsibility for tackling climate change and how much of the weight should be borne by the wealthier nations that have caused the problem with their years of excess. The challenge facing the Kurdistan Region is to balance needed development with a responsibility to protect the environment and not make the two sides enemies of each other. 

Environmental regulations have a bad rap in the eyes of the private sector and investors, says Hallo Askari, head of the KRG’s environment protection agency. 

Getting the go ahead for a development or industrial project is a lengthy process requiring the stamp of approval from a list of government ministries and offices, the last one of which is the environment agency. Some business owners will have already begun construction or even production and invested millions into their project by the time they knock on Askari’s door. And Askari said he sometimes cannot give his approval because of stringent and not always common sense regulations like a building must be at least 50 metres from the road. “Now we are the monster,” he said in an interview in his office on January 27. 

Askari is hoping to soften the board’s reputation without removing its teeth by amending the regulations. He is in the final stages of a process that involved consultations with industrial stakeholders, experts, and a review of global standards. 

“We have to be realistic… we need to balance between the environment and the economy,” he explained. “I don’t want to reject a project that contributes to the infrastructure, the economy, based on the environment, but we can impose our regulations.”

Askari expects to submit the revised regulations to the Council of Ministers for approval in February – maybe just in time, as several new cement factories are in the pipeline.