Official Warns against Environmental Impacts of anti-Iran Sanctions
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - Head of Iran’s Environmental Protection Organization (IEPO) said the unilateral sanctions imposed against Iran have had detrimental effects on the country’s environment and economy.
In a letter to the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon on Monday, IEPO Chief Masoumeh Ebtekar deplored the unilateral sanctions against the Iranian nation, saying they have had damaging effects on the environment of Iran, the region and even the world.
“The harmful effects of the sanctions are clearly evident on Iran’s economy and environment, and in sectors such as oil, industry, sewage management and the smog phenomenon.”
She explained that Iran’s restricted access to advanced technologies to produce fuels with high standards has seriously polluted the air in the country’s big cities, warning that the issue has put the lives of more than 35 million Iranian people in danger.
Ebtekar further noted that the country’s industry, battered by sanctions, have been unable to achieve environment-friendly technologies to improve air standards, as well as sewage management.
The lack of industrial technologies, she said, has brought the process of moving towards “green industries and balanced sustainable development” to a halt.
The Iranian official then called on the global bodies, including the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) to push for alleviating the harmful effects of unilateral economic sanctions against the environment in Iran and the entire world.
Western sanctions against Iran started in early 1980s, and since then the country has come under dozens of sanctions. Some of them are based on UN Security Council resolutions, others are decisions by the European Union, others are acts of the US Congress and still others are executive orders by the US president.
At the beginning of 2012, the United States and the European Union passed new sanctions on Iran’s oil and financial sectors with the goal of preventing other countries from purchasing Iranian oil and conducting transactions with the Central Bank of Iran that collects revenue from oil sales. The sanctions came into force in early summer 2012.