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Crispy Wil
This story appeared in Yale Environment 360 and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Three years ago, the vast swamps of Iraq’s southern Dhi Qar province were thriving. Fishermen glided on platforms through bodies of calm water among vast reedbeds, while buffaloes bathed amid the green vegetation. But today, those wetlands, a component of the vast Mesopotamian marshes, have shrunk in size into narrow channels of polluted water bordered by cracked, salty soil. Hundreds of dried fish dot the banks of streams, as well as water buffalo carcasses poisoned by salt water. Drought has dried up tens of thousands of hectares of fields and orchards, and villages are emptying as farmers abandon their land.
For their biodiversity and cultural significance, the United Nations in 2016 designated the Mesopotamian Marshes, which traditionally stretched between 15,000 and 20,000 square kilometers in the floodplain of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The marshes included one of the largest inland deltas in the world, an unexpected oasis in an incredibly warm and arid environment, home to 22 globally threatened species and 66 species of birds at risk.
But now that ecosystem, which includes alluvial marshes, swamps and freshwater lakes, is collapsing due to a combination of weather, hydrological and political factors. Rivers are shrinking and agricultural land that once produced barley and wheat, pomegranates and dates is blowing up. The environmental crisis is harming wildlife and pushing tens of thousands of marshland Arabs, who have occupied the domain for 5,000 years, to seek livelihoods elsewhere.
Experts warn that unless radical measures are taken to ensure that the region receives enough water and better manages what is left, the marshes of southern Iraq will disappear, with far-reaching consequences for the entire country, as farmers and herders abandon their land for already overcrowded urban spaces. and loss of production leads to higher food prices.
The swamps of Mesopotamia are known as the cradle of civilization, as anthropologists believe that this is where humanity, about 12,000 years ago, began its large-scale transition from a hunting and gathering way of life to an agricultural and agreement way of life. Encompassing 4 distinct swamps, the domain has traditionally been home to an exclusive diversity of fish and birds, serving as winter habitat for migratory birds and supporting productive shrimp and fish fishing.
But in the early 1990s, Saddam Hussein began systematically destroying the swamps, bombing and draining them to drive and punish the Arabs from the swamps for participating in uprisings opposed to his rule. In the end, the Iraqi president’s crusade reduced the water levels of the swamps by 90 percent. . After the Iraq war, the new government and marsh Arabs began to dismantle embankments and drainage works; an upcoming rehydration task implemented through the UN reported the recovery of surface water and plants to 58% of the original length of the swamp in 2006. The Arabs had returned to their homeland to resume harvesting, cultivation, herding water buffalo, and fishing.
Paresh Dave
Andres Kay
Sophie Barnet
Giordano Medea
The marshes and the buffer zones surrounding them have covered some 4,000 square kilometres lately, but those environmental benefits are again being compromised as Iraq enters its fourth year of drought. , in the rivers that supply almost all of Iraq’s water.
Last July, the Iraqi government said its water reserves had shrunk by 60 percent since last year. Low water flows have completely dried up the massive swamps. Without water for irrigation, farmers do plant. Without roots to support the soil, desertification threatens.
“The scenario in the swamps is now worse than when Saddam sought to destroy them,” says Hayder A. Al Thamiry, professor of water resources engineering at Baghdad University who works for the Government Center for the Restoration of Iraqi Wetlands and Wetlands. (CRIMW). In fact, at the time, water was still flowing from Iran into the Huwaizah swamps in eastern Iraq, keeping at least that component of the formula alive. But since Iran finished the structure of a 56-kilometer-long dam along its border with Iraq in 2009, water no longer flows into the Huwaizah River’s dry spells. Now all the swamps, says Al Thamiry, “suffer a lot. “
The river lowers flows the quality of the remaining water. Today, seawater penetrates up to 189 kilometers upstream of the Persian Gulf and has destroyed more than 24,000 hectares of farmland and 30,000 trees. No freshwater floods, pollutants from agriculture, the oil and fuel industry, and wastewater have also become more concentrated.
Climate replacement, of course, is making matters worse: reduced rainfall (Iraq has recorded record rainfall in recent years) and rising temperatures, which are accelerating evaporation from reservoirs and rivers. According to the United Nations Environment Program, Iraq is the fifth country with the greatest effects of climate change. “Over the past two years, there has been consistently less rain, less water, less land productivity and an increasing number of dust storms,” said Salah El Hajj Hassan, representative of Food and Agriculture. United Nations (FAO) in Iraq.
Mismanagement also causes estragos. la Iraq’s water infrastructure has not been sufficiently maintained or modernized; unlined trenches and channels that let water escape into the ground; and forced cuts obstruct water pumping and storage. Farmers often flood their fields for irrigation, rather than employing more parsimonious and specific irrigation methods, and villagers dig illegal wells and divert water from shared rivers.
Falling water levels have caused significant crop losses, making it difficult for millions of Iraqis to feed their families. Summer, a quarter of respondents, in the swamps and beyond, experienced more than 90 percent of poor wheat harvests due to lack of water. One in 3 families surveyed reduced ownership of their farmland and 42% of families reported that their barley, fruit and vegetable production had decreased compared to the previous harvest year.
Paresh Dave
Andres Kay
Sophie Barnet
Giordano Medea
From the beginning of last summer until the end of October, more than 2,000 families were forced to leave their homes due to the receding marshes, according to FAO’s El-Hajj Hassan. Some of the displaced have moved to swampy spaces that still have water, while others have abandoned their classic lifestyle and settled in cities such as Basra or Baghdad.
Tensions among those remaining in the marshes are rising, and security experts believe that water scarcity, and especially the disappearance of marshes, may only be national security. According to Eimear Hennessy, former threat analyst at G4S Consulting, “the thousands of others who have been uprooted and impoverished through the crisis in the marshes of Mesopotamia, will most likely be recruited through non-state actors,” militias and terrorist teams, “who promise a future. “
According to Nature Iraq, the recent drainage of the marshes has led to a drop in diversity, with populations of Binni, a goldfish prized among marsh Arabians, plummeting. Two thousand officially registered fishermen have lost their source of income and are now unemployed,” Saleh Hadi, Dhi Qar’s director of agriculture, said in October.
Before the drought, the marbled blue-green duck, listed as Near Threatened by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, thrived in the marshes, as did the endangered Basra cane warbler and the local Iraqi babbler. , those birds are noticed much less often.
Cattle are also suffering. Water buffalo, grazing in rivers, now struggle to find enough drinking water and food; Thousands have died from disease and malnutrition. “The drop in water levels is having a devastating effect on bison farmers,” NRC spokesman Samah Hadid said. “The bison breeders we communicate with are increasingly desperate. “
As clients worsen for communities in the Iraqi marshes, NGOs are selling movements that can only reduce the effect of drought, adding investments in water filtration and treatment systems for areas with high salinization. They are putting pressure on the Iraqi authorities, nationally and internationally. regional level, to collect more knowledge about water flows and the effects of scarcity, and improve regulation of aquifers to avoid overpumping, which decreases the quantity and quality of groundwater.
The Iraqi government supplies some cereal manufacturers with salt-tolerant wheat; breeders feed on drought-resistant sugar beets; And academics advocate for systems that provide conflict control to suffering communities in order to share water resources equitably.
For years, Iraq has been negotiating with its upstream neighbors to allow more water to cross its border, but the scenario has not improved. In January 2022, Iraq announced that it would sue Iran in the International Court of Justice for cutting off its access to water. , however, the case has not progressed. Last July, Iraq asked Turkey to increase the amount of water flowing south into Iraq. Both sides agreed that an Iraqi “technical delegation” would stop in Turkey to assess the water levels of Turkish dams, but Turkey would not settle for duty over Iraq’s water shortages. Instead, Turkey’s ambassador to Iraq, Ali Riza Güney, accused Iraqis of “wasting” their water resources and called on the country to reduce water waste and improve its irrigation systems.
The new year is expected to bring below-average rainfall in the region, according to the United Nations World Food Programme and FAO. With the worsening effects of climate change and no foreseeable improvement in water management, the outlook for Iraq’s Mesopotamian swamps and the communities they look bleak.
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