Introduction
Syria’s post-Assad recovery is entering a critical phase. The easing of major economic sanctions, the re-entry of international financial institutions, accelerating refugee and internally displaced person returns, and a surge of foreign investment proposals in energy, transport, telecommunications, airports and real estate have created an opening to restore basic services and rebuild damaged infrastructure and housing. They have also raised a more consequential question: what type of recovery is being planned and implemented, by whom, and at whose expense?
Syria’s recovery will not only be defined by the amount of funding mobilized or the number of infrastructure projects delivered. It will be defined by the type of recovery pathway that is chosen, the standards that guide it, and the extent to which it reduces rather than reproduces vulnerability. It is a governance question about how those recovery choices are made in a country emerging from prolonged conflict, institutional erosion, and deep socioeconomic strain.
This paper argues that Syria’s recovery pathway is marked by a significant gap between official discourse and practice. While environmental and social considerations have gained some visibility in official discourse, the overwhelming direction of recovery remains dominated by centrally negotiated, high-visibility investments in energy, transport, telecommunications, airports, tourism, and real estate. Reconstruction and recovery projects are not yet governed by binding environmental and social safeguards, transparent procurement, meaningful local consultation, or enforceable protections for housing, land, and property rights.
The central risk is not simply that reconstruction will ignore the environment. It is that environmental costs, displacement risks, and resource pressures will be distributed unequally: benefits may accrue to central authorities, investors, contractors, and better-connected urban areas, while poorer neighborhoods, farmers, internally displaced people, and informal residents absorb a disproportionate share of the costs.
Syria still has an opportunity to alter this trajectory. To do so, environmental sustainability must become a binding framework for investment and public decision-making rather than a parallel policy language to attract international green funding. This requires transparent project selection and contracting; environmental and social impact assessment; housing, land, and property safeguards; participatory local planning; stronger municipal capacity; and greater investment in essential needs like water, agriculture, renewable energy, waste management, housing repair, and climate-resilient livelihoods.
Why Syria’s Recovery Pathway Matters
This paper addresses a practical policy question: “What recovery pathway is being adopted in Syria, and to what extent is it advancing or undermining environmentally sustainable recovery?”
Three considerations make this question particularly urgent. The first is scale. A recent rapid assessment by the World Bank estimated reconstruction costs at a conservative estimate of $216 billion, with direct physical damages to infrastructure, residential and non-residential buildings estimated at $108 billion. Recovery decisions taken now will shape whether rebuilt systems are more resilient, efficient, and socially equitable, or whether they lock the country into higher long-term costs, deeper resource stress, and fragile public services.
The second is structural complexity. Syria’s recovery is not being shaped by a single public authority or a linear national plan, but by a crowded field of actors with unequal mandates, resources and influence. These include transitional state institutions, line ministries, municipalities, international financial institutions, UN agencies, bilateral donors, regional investors, private contractors, local civil society, returnees, internally displaced people, and communities directly affected by reconstruction decisions. This creates a complex governance environment in which technical recovery choices are also political choices: who defines priorities, who controls resources, who benefits from investment, whose land or livelihoods are affected, and which environmental standards are applied or ignored. Without strong public safeguards, transparent decision-making and conflict-sensitive environmental standards, this complexity can increase the risk of elite capture, uneven territorial development, weak accountability, and projects that prioritize speed, visibility or private return over long-term social and environmental resilience.
The third is the risk of conflict relapse and social instability. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has long highlighted the connection between fair access to natural resources and conflict, finding that at least 40% of intrastate conflicts over the past 60 years have had a link to a fight over natural resources, and that the issue of fair access to natural resources and environmental stress doubles the risk of conflict relapse within the first five years. This is especially important in a context like Syria shaped by environmental injustice and poor resource governance. The country faces pollution of water, land, and air, water scarcity, land degradation, deforestation, biodiversity loss, and reduced adaptation capacity. Climate change is expected to exacerbate these problems in the coming years. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) described the 2025 agricultural season in Syria as one of the worst in decades. The Overseas Development Institute (ODI), a leading development think tank, similarly notes that Syria’s pre-war water deficit has intensified due to damaged infrastructure, reduced supply, return movements, economic recovery, rising temperatures and drought. Without sustainable recovery, these pressures risk deepening inequality, intensifying competition over resources and fueling new grievances.
Analytical Framework and Recovery Pathways
To address the policy question, the paper uses political ecology as its main analytical frame. Political ecology examines how power and inequality shape the way natural resources and environmental risks are distributed. It helps examine Syria’s recovery not as a purely technical reconstruction process, but as a set of political choices shaped by power, resources, history and inequality. The paper also draws on the “Build Back Better” approach as a complementary benchmark. The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) defines Build Back Better as using recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction to increase the resilience of nations and communities, meaning that recovery should not merely restore pre-crisis conditions; it should reduce future vulnerability and avoid creating new risks.
On this basis, the paper distinguishes between two possible recovery pathways: a more sustainable pathway that integrates climate and environmental risk, accountable governance, land and housing rights, safe debris and pollution management, and resilient livelihoods; and a more unsustainable pathway driven by rapid visible rebuilding, centralized and non-transparent decision-making, elite-biased allocation, speculative investment, hydrocarbon lock-in and weak environmental safeguards.
The Recovery Now Emerging
Official Discourse and the Early Green Architecture
There is some evidence that the Syrian transitional authorities are trying to add an environmental policy layer, at least rhetorically, to recovery. On World Environment Day in June 2026, President Ahmed al-Sharaa emphasized the need to protect land and natural resources and called for rebuilding “a green homeland” and a healthier future. This matters symbolically because it places environmental language inside national political discourse, rather than confining it to technical ministries. The same framing was echoed by the Minister of Local Administration and Environment, who described environmental protection as a central component of recovery and reconstruction and linked it to water scarcity, desertification, wildfires, biodiversity, and other challenges the country is facing.
This environment-oriented discourse has also begun to acquire institutional form. The Ministry of Local Administration and Environment has launched a national climate-risk assessment in cooperation with FAO and national institutions to identify the principal threats facing different sectors, evaluate their likely impacts, and inform future adaptation and environmental risk-management policies. The ministry also announced that it was preparing a national solid waste management strategy with international partners. The proposed strategy aims to move beyond temporary collection and disposal measures toward an integrated system covering sorting, treatment, safe disposal and recycling, while strengthening the capacity of local authorities. These initiatives suggest an effort to connect environmental diagnosis, project preparation and municipal service delivery, although their financing, implementation arrangements and enforceability remain unclear.
The same ministry is also aligning priority projects with the requirements of international climate-finance mechanisms. In May 2026, the ministry approved a national program of priority climate projects to strengthen Syria’s access to climate finance and support adaptation and resilience. According to the ministry, officials screened projects against the eligibility criteria of the Adaptation Fund, the Green Climate Fund, and the Global Environment Facility. The ministry had already convened a national workshop in April 2026 that evaluated 50 project proposals from multiple ministries across energy, transport, industry, agriculture, forests, urban development, water, and environmental and health risk management.
Additional steps within the Ministry of Finance indicate that climate considerations are beginning to enter economic policy discussions rather than remaining confined to the environmental ministry. In April 2026, the finance ministry discussed with ODI Global, a think tank based in the UK, the integration of climate risks into economic, financial and investment decisions as part of a broader long-term financial strategy. The ministry’s proposals included establishing a specialized climate-finance unit, coordinating with the Ministry of Local Administration and Environment, building national technical capacity, and applying Environmental, Social and Governance standards within public financial management. Discussions also covered the possible development of carbon certificate markets. In parallel, the Ministry of Energy also began preparations for a national workshop on climate risks as part of the collaboration with ODI Global. These remain proposals and preparatory measures rather than established policies, but they indicate an emerging attempt to connect climate risk with budgeting, public investment and energy planning across government.
The Material Choices Shaping Reconstruction
The deeper question, however, is whether this green and resilience-oriented discourse is shaping priorities as well as reconstruction projects: which sectors receive investment, which infrastructure is rebuilt first, which resources become sources of revenue, and which risks are transferred to communities. On this point, the picture is more negative.
Energy decisions are especially revealing. Restoring electricity is essential for households, public services, industry and return, but current signals suggest that Syria’s energy recovery is not only about service provision; it is also about restoring hydrocarbons as a revenue base and repositioning the country as a regional energy corridor. The $7 billion agreement led by Qatar’s UCC Holding, covering four gas-fired plants with 4,000 MW capacity and a 1,000 MW solar plant, is significant because it could supply more than half of Syria’s electricity needs if implemented. Yet the structure of the deal shows that fossil fuel remains the core pillar of energy reconstruction, while solar is included as a secondary component. This is not automatically negative, given the urgency of restoring power, but it risks locking recovery into gas dependency unless accompanied by clear renewable targets, grid reform, energy-efficiency measures and pollution controls.
This fossil-centered pathway has become more visible through Syria’s pursuit of offshore oil and gas exploration with Chevron and Qatar’s UCC, the formation of a Saudi and US-linked consortium for oil and gas exploration and energy production in northeastern Syria, and the regional effects of the Strait of Hormuz disruption. Iraq’s search for alternative export routes has repositioned Syria, and particularly Baniyas, as a strategic Mediterranean corridor for fuel oil, crude and naphtha. Politically, this gives Syria a new form of regional leverage. The country is not only rebuilding domestic energy supply; it is positioning itself as a transfer hub between Iraq, the Gulf and the Mediterranean. Economically, this can generate transit fees, reconnect Syria to regional trade and attract infrastructure investment. However, environmentally, the risks are not abstract. Syria may gain strategic value from becoming an energy corridor, while also locking recovery into heavy dependence on fossil infrastructure. At the same time, local communities will most probably absorb the costs through road damage, pollution risks, safety hazards, fuel price pressures and unequal exposure to environmental harm.
The same pattern is visible in the broader flow of investment – or, more accurately, of “investment declarations”, as very few have materialized so far. Syria signed 12 investment deals worth $14 billion in August 2025, including a $4 billion new Damascus airport, a $2 billion Damascus subway and the $2 billion Damascus Towers real estate project. Earlier, it had signed $6.4 billion in Saudi investments, and in February 2026 Saudi Arabia announced a further package including a $2.8 billion fund for two airports in Aleppo, a new airline, an $800 million telecommunications investment and a proposed coastal desalination plant. Taken together, these announcements reinforce the predominance of large, centrally negotiated and highly visible projects in the emerging recovery agenda, even if their implementation remains uncertain.
Agriculture presents a partial contrast to this pattern. It is central to Syria’s recovery as it underpins food security and rural livelihoods, while also being highly exposed to drought, water scarcity, damaged irrigation and land degradation. Yet the sector has not attracted investment comparable in scale or maturity to that announced for energy, transport, telecommunications and real estate. The strongest indication of a longer-term approach is the National Agriculture Strategy 2026–2030, launched by the Ministry of Agriculture. It presents agriculture as a strategic recovery sector and aims to restore livelihoods, strengthen resilience and transform the agrifood system. Its announced priorities include irrigation rehabilitation, water-use efficiency, climate-smart agriculture, seed-system recovery, sustainable natural-resource management and support for smallholder farmers. However, financing commitments, measurable targets and implementation arrangements remain unclear.
Private-sector interest is also emerging, notably from Gulf-based companies such as Baladna, Silal, Mair Group, NVSSoft, and Al Muhaidib. Their announced activities include dairy and livestock production, contract farming, digital agricultural finance, technical assistance, cold storage, processing, packaging and exports. Although the announcements refer to food security, farmer incomes, technology transfer and sustainable production, most remain memoranda of understanding, feasibility studies or preliminary service and procurement arrangements, with limited disclosure of investment values, timelines or capital deployment. They therefore appear primarily oriented toward commercially viable value chains and market access rather than a comprehensive sustainable recovery model. Agriculture could be gaining policy attention, but this has not translated into investment or implementation comparable to that seen, or at least announced, in other priority sectors.
A similar gap between environmentally promising practices and an integrated national recovery framework is evident in debris management. Managing Syria’s debris is essential to the country’s recovery, with tens of millions of tonnes of rubble still obstructing access and posing environmental and explosive-ordnance risks. The principal national actor is the Ministry of Emergency and Disaster Management, which reported in June 2026 that it had removed approximately 2.2 million cubic meters of debris, equivalent to around 4 million tonnes from different governorates, of which 1 million tonnes were recycled into construction materials or reused for agricultural roads. UNDP is the other major actor. Its current REVIVE project plans to clear 570,000 tonnes across Aleppo, Deir ez-Zor, Homs and Rural Damascus and has already recycled more than 15,000 cubic meters into over 123,000 construction items. These initiatives represent valuable progress, particularly the shift from disposal toward recycling and productive reuse. However, debris management remains largely organized through individual projects. While the Ministry of Local Administration and Environment is developing a National Strategy for Solid Waste Management with the World Bank, no comprehensive national strategy for conflict debris has been announced, leaving important issues such as prioritization, hazardous-material screening, recycling standards, environmental safeguards, and property rights without an integrated national framework.
Overall, the available evidence suggests that green and resilience-oriented discourse is not yet determining Syria’s reconstruction priorities. Environmental considerations are visible in agricultural planning and in efforts to recycle conflict debris, but these remain weaker, less financed and less institutionalized than the investment pipeline centered on hydrocarbons, transport corridors and flagship infrastructure.
Power, Stakeholders, and Unequal Risk
The emerging recovery coalition in Syria has five main layers. The first is the central state, especially the presidency, the Supreme Council for Economic Development, the Syrian Investment Authority, and the different ministries. The second is local government: governors, municipalities, and administrative units. The third is the donor and multilateral layer: the EU, World Bank, and UN (UNDP, FAO, UN-Habitat, UNHCR, and other agencies). The fourth is regional capital, especially Gulf and Turkish governments and firms. The fifth is Syrian society itself: returnees, IDPs, local communities, civil society organizations, informal workers, farmers, and business networks with deeply unequal capacities to shape decision-making.
Formally, the Syrian government is presenting recovery as centralized enough to restore institutional coherence while also becoming more efficient, transparent, and responsive to citizens. However, the commitment to decentralization remains centered largely within the Ministry of Local Administration and Environment. Minister Mohammad Anjarani has argued that reforms to the Local Administration Law should expand the powers of administrative units, strengthen civil society participation and bring services and decision-making closer to citizens. In practice, however, power is likely to follow finance, security and access to external legitimacy more than local participation. The EU’s political dialogue and reconstruction forum, Gulf financial support, the clearance of Syria’s arrears to the World Bank by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and Turkey’s influence in trade, infrastructure and security all give external actors strong agenda-setting power. This would mean that financeable and politically brokered sectors, such as electricity, transport, trade corridors, airports, ports, telecoms, hydrocarbons and large urban projects, are likely to move faster than less visible projects that favor things like environmental adaptation or local community recovery.
The distributional implications of Syria’s recovery reflect existing power dynamics in which state authorities, external donors and regional investors shape priorities, while local communities bear disproportionate risks. A concrete example of this dynamic can be seen in the Haydareyah neighborhood of Aleppo, where a controversial urban reorganization project has sparked public debate. The project involves redeveloping large parts of the area, but residents, particularly low-income households and those without formal documentation, have raised concerns over unclear compensation mechanisms, lack of transparency, and fears of losing property rights. The project has been criticized for insufficient consultation with affected communities and for prioritizing urban investment and planning objectives over residents’ rights and livelihoods. In summary, the Haydareyah project illustrates broader concerns in Syria’s recovery: redevelopment driven by top-down planning and investment priorities, combined with insufficient representation of local communities, can shift social and economic burdens onto vulnerable populations while limiting their participation in decision-making.
Evaluating Syria’s Pathway So Far
It is important to note that, despite the headlines, Syria is not yet experiencing a full reconstruction boom, and it may still be too early to definitively judge the overall trajectory. Nevertheless, the evidence reviewed here, including policy choices, institutional developments, investment announcements and initial implementation, offers an early indication of the direction of travel. This evidence suggests that Syria’s recovery is not yet following a clearly sustainable pathway. Instead, it is marked by a significant gap between growing environmental awareness in official discourse and early institutional design (notably where international actors are involved), on the one hand, and a largely conventional, investor-driven and infrastructure-centered approach in practice, on the other.
On climate and environmental sustainability, Syria’s pathway remains tentative with nascent initiatives on the margins. Official rhetoric, efforts to develop national frameworks to access international climate funds, the National Agriculture Strategy, air-pollution monitoring in Damascus, and the recycling of conflict debris indicate that environmental sustainability is gaining greater institutional visibility than it had under late-war reconstruction discourse. However, most of those initiatives are recent, underfunded or project-based, with limited evidence of implementation. More importantly, climate and ecological criteria do not yet appear to shape the largest investment decisions, which remain concentrated in fossil energy, regional corridors and flagship infrastructure. Environmental sustainability is therefore emerging as a policy layer, but not yet as a governing principle of reconstruction.
On speed of recovery, a critical dimension of the Build Back Better framework, the government is prioritizing rapid visible reconstruction. This is positive and understandable given the scale of service collapse, electricity shortages, damaged infrastructure and return pressures. Yet speed can also become a risk if it bypasses environmental screening, local consultation, land-rights protection and transparent procurement. A fast recovery may restore services quickly, but it can also lock in poor infrastructure choices and create new grievances if affected communities are not consulted or protected.
On the prioritized sectors, the current pathway leans strongly toward sectors attractive to international and regional investors. Announced projects are mostly concentrated in energy, transport, telecommunications, and tourism, while agriculture and industry remain under-prioritized despite their stronger potential to generate durable employment and support balanced national development. This indicates that reconstruction is being shaped more by investor appetite and high-visibility projects than by a comprehensive needs-based recovery strategy.
The energy sector provides a particularly clear illustration of the economic model being pursued. Syria is not only rebuilding its energy mix with a primary focus on fossil fuels but is also positioning itself as a regional hub for fuel and energy transit following disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz. While this strategy may generate revenue and enhance regional influence in the short term, it also risks creating a heavily fossil fuel-dependent economic model.
On equity and inclusion, the risks are significant. Investor-led recovery may benefit national accounts, contractors, and politically connected urban centers before it reaches, if it ever reaches, poorer communities, farmers, informal residents, returnees, and IDPs. This divide is already being described sarcastically by Syrians as the creation of two “Syrias”: one polished, elite, and visible on influencers’ pages, where life appears stable and prosperous, and another “Sourya” (in Arabic), representing poverty, hardship, camps, and ongoing suffering. Cases such as Haydareyah in Aleppo are not isolated, but are repeated in other areas such as Homs’ Boulevard of Victory and areas slated for reconstruction under Legislative Decree 66 in Damascus. These examples highlight deeper issues of equity and representation, where redevelopment processes often marginalize already vulnerable communities. When residents are excluded from decision-making, reconstruction can reinforce existing inequalities, concentrating benefits among elites while displacing poorer populations and eroding their rights to land, housing and participation in shaping their own futures.
Finally, on governance and transparency, the pathway remains weak. Most of the mega-projects announced since December 2024 have been presented with limited public information on partners, selection processes, ownership structures, operating models, consultation mechanisms or long-term concessions. Decision-making appears highly centralized, largely confined to the presidency, the Syrian Sovereign Fund and the Supreme Council for Economic Development, both closely linked to the presidency itself. This concentration of power reduces oversight, limits accountability and raises concerns about how priorities are set and who ultimately benefits from reconstruction. This issue is not limited to large external investments but is also evident in public fundraising campaigns which were announced and sponsored by the state. These campaigns have been promoted to mobilize national solidarity and diaspora contributions for reconstruction, yet they often lack clear reporting on how funds are collected, allocated, and spent. As a result, they quickly faced public backlash, as they were widely perceived as symbolic gestures rather than effective mechanisms for reconstruction. Despite declarations involving hundreds of millions of US dollars, a significant portion of the pledged funds was reportedly not delivered. This gap between announcements and actual contributions has further undermined public trust, raising concerns about credibility, accountability and the real impact of such initiatives on the recovery process.
Conclusion
Syria’s recovery is still at an early and fluid stage, and it would be premature to describe the country’s reconstruction pathway as fully settled. Nevertheless, the evidence reviewed in this paper reveals a clear gap between emerging environmental rhetoric and the material direction of recovery. On the one hand, the transitional authorities are beginning to build an environmental policy layer into recovery, by incorporating environmental and climate considerations into official discourse, institutional strategic planning and selected recovery initiatives. On the other hand, the dominant trajectory remains shaped by centrally negotiated, high-visibility investments in energy, transport, telecommunications, airports, tourism and real estate. In material terms, recovery is therefore still largely conventional, investor-driven and infrastructure-centered. In political ecology terms, environmental sustainability might be present in Syria’s recovery as a public discourse or policy language, but not yet as an organizing principle of power, allocation, and risk management.
This distinction matters because sustainability is not defined by the existence of individual environmental initiatives, but by whether environmental and social criteria govern the full recovery process. At present, reconstruction projects are not consistently subject to binding safeguards, transparent procurement, meaningful local consultation, or enforceable protections for housing, land and property rights. As a result, the benefits of recovery may be concentrated among central authorities, investors, contractors and better-connected areas, while poorer communities, farmers, returnees, and displaced people absorb a disproportionate share of environmental and social risk. Syria is therefore not yet following a clearly sustainable pathway, even if the current trajectory cannot be described as entirely environmentally blind.
The pathway remains open to change. Moving toward a Build Back Better model requires environmental sustainability to be translated from public discourse into enforceable public policy and institutionalized as an environmental governance framework that binds all reconstruction decisions, rather than remaining a parallel policy language or an instrument for accessing green finance. This means transparent investment decisions, clear public-private partnership models, environmental and social safeguards, meaningful local consultation, and public reporting on how funds are allocated and spent. It also requires rebalancing recovery priorities beyond flagship projects toward agriculture, water, local services, renewable energy, waste management, and climate-resilient livelihoods.
The central risk is that Syria’s reconstruction proceeds rapidly but unevenly, restoring visible infrastructure while reproducing or even magnifying underlying social, economic, and environmental vulnerabilities. Nevertheless, the current transition offers an opportunity to integrate resilience, equity, and environmental protection into recovery frameworks before prevailing investment and planning choices become institutionally embedded. The primary challenge is therefore to reform the standards, institutions, and power relations that shape its allocation and implementation. Syria’s reconstruction can be considered sustainable only to the extent that it reduces structural vulnerabilities, distributes benefits equitably, and prevents current recovery decisions from generating future environmental and social risks.
The views represented in this paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Arab Reform Initiative, its staff, or its board.
