For war-scarred Iraq, climate crisis the next great threat
As Iraq bakes in the blistering summer heat, its hardscrabble farmers and livestock herders are battling severe water shortages that are killing their animals, fields and way of life. The oilrich country, scarred by wars and insurgencies over the past four decades, is also one of the world’s most vulnerable to climate change and struggles with a host of other environmental challenges.
Upstream dams in Turkey and Iran have diminished the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which are also heavily polluted with sewage, waste and agricultural runoff as they flow southeast through Iraq.
Drought has hit the Mesopotamian marshes, said to be the site of the biblical Garden of Eden, where water buffalos and their owners once found respite from summer heat above 50 degrees Celsius.
In southern Iraq, where the two big streams merge into the Shatt al Arab, the reduced flow has caused saltwater intrusion from the Gulf, degrading the waterway that is shaded by lush palm groves on its banks.
“Everything we plant dies: the palm trees and the alfalfa which normally tolerates saltwater,” said Rafiq Taufiq, a farmer in the southern riverside city of Basra.
The saline water encroaching ever further upstream has already destroyed thousands of hectares of farmland. This year, the trend has worsened again, said Alaa al Badran, an agricultural engineer in Basra province. “For the first time the salt entered as early as April, the start of the farming season,” he said.
The problems are exacerbated as decades of military conflict, neglect and corruption have destroyed irrigation systems and water treatment plants.
According to the United Nations, only 3.5 per cent of Iraq’s farmlands are watered with irrigation systems. Rivers are meanwhile often polluted with viruses and bacteria, oil spills and industrial chemicals.
In Basra, where freshwater canals are clogged with garbage, more than 100,000 people were hospitalised in 2018 after drinking water polluted with sewage and toxic waste.
The heat and the water shortages have been a blow to Iraq’s agricultural sector, which accounts for five per cent of the economy and 20 per cent of jobs, but provides only half of the food needs of Iraq, which relies heavily on cheap imports.