Libya's polluted coastline is a symptom of state failure

In the 13 years since the downfall of Muammar Gaddafi, Libya has become a byword for the perils of Western military intervention.

The country’s political dysfunction and on-and-off civil war have consumed most of the attention that the international community dedicates to Libya, even as the environmental issues that stem from these problems grow worse and go all but unaddressed.

Libya’s hundreds of kilometres of coastline — the launchpad for boats carrying African migrants to Europe and Libyan oil to the rest of the world —offers a prime example.

"Amid the countless immediate political challenges confronting Libya’s fractious leaders, longer-term objectives like environmental protection and ocean conservation rarely receive priority. Yet the consequences of inaction have already begun to manifest"

As Libya’s duelling governments and allied militias compete for control of the country, pollution has flooded the coast. In 2021, authorities in the Libyan capital of Tripoli had to close a range of nearby beaches because of pollution that included cans, plastic bags, plastic bottles, and raw sewage.

Libya's environmental catastrophe

Abdelbasset al-Miri, a local official, described the episode as “catastrophic” at the time even as it represented just one instance of the environmental issues that have battered the Libyan coast in recent years.

A 2021 investigation by the Conflict and Environment Observatory suggested that Libya’s national oil company tried to downplay the extent of an offshore oil spill near the Libyan-Tunisian border that spread for dozens of kilometres.

That same year, the Conflict and Environment Observatory reported that a desalination plant in the coastal Libyan city of Derna was leaking oil into the sea, noting the potential impact on “an important feeding and nesting area for turtles, seabirds and fish” and “regionally important seagrass beds.”

The pollution presents an imminent threat to the wildlife of the Libyan coast, which the International Union for Conservation of Nature, better known as “the IUCN,” last year called “one of several hotspots of marine and coastal biodiversity in the Mediterranean.”

That January, the IUCN convened a workshop on ocean conservation at which Libya’s Tripoli-based environmental ministry pledged to establish and reinforce a number of protected areas along the coast.

However the workshop failed to address some of the more obvious challenges with enforcement. One of the proposed conservation areas, for example, sits in the east of Libya, where the Libyan National Army — a rival of the regime in Tripoli — holds sway.

The government in Tripoli has even struggled to secure protected areas closer to its seat of power, such as Farwa Island, an idyllic biodiversity hotspot beset by plastic pollution.

Amid the countless immediate political challenges confronting Libya’s fractious leaders, longer-term objectives like environmental protection and ocean conservation rarely receive priority. Yet the consequences of inaction have already begun to manifest.

In 2022, a Libyan environmental organisation raised the alarm that 500 varieties of fish had migrated away from Libya’s coast because of pollution. The ramifications extend well beyond the animals themselves, given that the fishing industry employs 12,000 Libyans—1 percent of the entire labour force.

Libya fails to learn from Derna

The international community has dedicated some resources to helping Libya tackle the threat to the biodiversity of its coastline. The European Union and the Global Environment Facility, for instance, have bankrolled programs to clean up pollutants in Libya and neighbouring countries.

A more comprehensive solution, however, will likely remain elusive, with Libya’s political infighting absorbing the international community’s attention and preventing consistent enforcement of environmental regulations, let alone the creation of a nationwide environmental policy.

The devastating flood that struck Derna last September put front and centre the challenges that Libya as a whole faces in fighting pollution across its coast.

The flood — which itself resulted from rival Libyan authorities’ failure to cooperate on the maintenance of a pair of dams — led not only to a humanitarian crisis but also to an environmental disaster.

“It is anticipated that there will be a significant impact on many of the coast’s ecologically important areas,” a Conflict and Environment Observatory report said of the floods. “Habitats and ecosystems are likely to be damaged or disturbed by the vast volumes of polluted sediment and debris.” The environmental organisation voiced concerns about “impact the entire marine food chain, from phytoplankton upwards, with knock-on impacts for fishing livelihoods.”

Despite Libyan leaders’ attempts to collaborate on humanitarian aid in the aftermath of the flood, they soon resorted to rejecting blame for the catastrophe. Just as these rivalries complicated the disaster response, they undermined efforts to manage the parallel environmental crisis.

The Conflict and Environment Observatory report, for example, emphasised that “the work of conservation groups, such as the Alhaya Life Organization for the Protection of Land and Marine Creatures, is also likely to be disrupted.”

Until Libya addresses political disputes often viewed as intractable, a long-term strategy for stopping the pollution of the country’s coast will remain out of reach.

The international community can play a central role by integrating marine conservation into the sputtering campaign to forge a Libyan political consensus. Until then, Libya’s biodiversity hotspots — and the thousands of Libyans who depend on them — will suffer the consequences.