UN warns of ‘devastating impact’ as Iraq’s marshlands in danger of drying

Iraq’s ancient Mesopotamian marshlands are in danger of drying due to a sharp fall in water levels in the Euphrates and Tigris rivers during the country’s worst heatwave in four decades, the United Nations has warned.

The UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) expressed deep concern “about the grave consequences of climate change and water scarcity on the [freshwater] marshes”, which cover 28,000sq km of territory but can expand to 45,000sq km during flooding.

The dire situation contrasts with conditions early in January this year in the Euphrates marshes, when rainfall and successful intervention by Iraq’s water ministry raised the water level to 100 centimetres.

The FAO cited official figures which reveal that “almost 70 per cent of the marshes are devoid of water”. At one location in southern Dhi Qar province, “the water level of the Euphrates is only 56 centimetres, and in the marshes from zero to 30 centimetres”, it said.

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High salinity is killing fish and harming water buffalo in the Euphrates marshes and the Tigris river-fed wetlands bordering Iran, it added. “The dire situation is having a devastating impact on the marshes system, buffalo producers, farmers and fisheries”, forcing many of them to migrate to the cities where high unemployment prompts protests.

Tribes have inhabited the wetlands for thousands of years. They have constructed boats and irrigation canals, built reed houses and mosques, fished, grown rice and dates, raised livestock and created their own unique subculture.

The Euphrates and Tigris flow through Iraq and Syria before emptying into the Gulf. However, Turkish and Iranian dams on their headwaters, drought, mismanagement and extreme heat caused by climate change have put at risk the existence of communities dwelling in marshland created by the two rivers.

A 2021 Iraqi government report warned that the rivers could run dry by 2040. In 2016, the marshes, the largest regional wetlands, were designated a world heritage site by Unesco, the UN’s cultural body. The marshes are also areas of biodiversity. They are home to hundreds of thousands of birds, 40 species of fish and other wildlife.

Until recently the marshes cooled temperatures and averted dust storms. They have only partly recovered from 21st-century warfare. During the early 1990s the marshes were drained by Baghdad following Kurdish and Shia unrest in the wake of the 1991 US-led war to liberate Kuwait from Iraq.

After the 2003 US occupation, around half the marshes were reflooded and repopulated to a limited extent. Temperatures in the 40s have put the marshes once again at risk of extinction if the rivers’ flow from Turkey, Iran and northern Iraq is not increased and the authorities fail to ration supplies for agriculture, industry and civilian use.