Protection of the environment is an issues of utmost importance to any region and globally. Apart from this importance, protection of the environment by the governments is considered to be a basic human right by the European Union conventions.

Cyprus is a "small" island located in Eastern Mediterranean. Its geographical position and its history puts it in a very delicate environmental system. Most years are considered to be draught periods. The existing forest cover specially in north Cyprus is man-made during the British collonial rule. Its shores are close to main shipping lines, high density tourist centers in Turkey, Israel and Egypt. Furthermore, during the last couple of decades the island itself enjoyed a boom in tourism.

Apart from these factors , the recent history is mainly about violent internal troubles, an invasion and a coup and the current status quo which divides the island.

All these factors brought together caused tremendous damage to the island's environment which was already very delicate.

Here we outline some major environmental problems in north Cyprus separated into individual dossiers. Some dossiers have an extensive collection of supporting documents and photographs.

Unfortunately, this report is nowhere near being comprehensive. As other dossiers in these pages, it is an evolving document to include more issues and more supporting odcuments.