NASIRIYAH, Iraq — Some 1,200 Iraqi families
have been forced out of southern marshes and farmlands over the past six
months, a local official told AFP, as drought ravages swathes of the country.
اضافة اعلان
The Mesopotamian Marshes, a
UNESCO World Heritage
site, have been battered by low rainfall and reduced flows in the Tigris and
Euphrates rivers due to dams built upstream in Turkey and Iran.
Oil-rich Iraq, battered by decades of war, is also
the world’s fifth-most vulnerable country to some key effects of climate
change, including water scarcity and desertification, say the United Nations.
Saleh Hadi, head of the agriculture authority in Dhi
Qar province, said “about 1,200 families of buffalo herders and farmers in the
marshes and other areas of the province were displaced from their homes due to
water shortages”.
The mass exodus began in April, Hadi said, adding
that more than 2,000 buffaloes had died as a result of the drought.
“Half of the families have moved closer to the river in areas north of
Nasiriyah,” the regional capital, he added, while others have relocated to
central and southern provinces such as Babylon, Kut, Karbala and Basra.
According to Hadi, the Dhi Qar’s Chibayish marshes
and the village of Manar in the Hammar marshes were hit particularly hard, but
families have also left Umm Al-Wadaa and farming lands in Sayyed Dakhil, Suk
Al-Shuyukh, and Al-Islah.
Iraq’s water resources minister last month said that
2022 has been “one of the driest years Iraq has seen since 1930”, citing three
consecutive years of low precipitation and reduced river flow.
This summer, vast swathes of wetland in Hawizah,
along the border with Iran, as well as in the touristic Chibayish region have
dried up.
The
UN Food and Agriculture Organization noted in
July “unprecedented low water levels” in the marshes, “one of the poorest
regions in Iraq and one of the most affected by climate change”.
The agency underlined the “disastrous impact” on
more than 6,000 families living in that area who “are losing their buffaloes,
their unique living asset”.
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