By Alexander Whitcomb and Rekar Aziz
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Despite public obsession with oil, Iraqi Kurdistan’s water may be its most important natural resource. After all, you can’t extract oil without massive quantities of water at your disposal.
Water is the source of life, as the well-worn phrase puts it. But it is also the source of wars, bitter disputes and cash.
Yet, despite a wealth of H2O, the Kurdistan Region may face serious water shortages in the near future.
During the spring and summer, melting snows in the mountains fill river basins and produce gushing waterfalls, to the delight of tourists escaping the southern heat.
The region holds five rivers: the Great Zab, the Little Zab, the Sirwan and Alwan. While these rivers may not be household names like the Tigris and Euphrates -- both of which run south of the region’s borders -- they carry almost all of Iraq’s locally sourced surface water.
About 50 percent of Kurdish water comes from within the region, in contrast with Iraq’s eight percent. Out of that eight percent, most comes from the Kurdistan Region (and 71 percent comes from Turkey), lending the south considerably less water security than the semi-autonomous northern region.
According to the KRG, the region has 5,174 natural springs, the vast majority of which are in the northern Dohuk governorate near the Turkish border. This has been very good for water bottling companies, one of the region’s main industrial products.
There is reason to worry about rapidly diminishing water sources, however. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) concluded that global warming and climate change have led to a fall in precipitation rates across the country.
Together with the construction of new dams outside the country, these factors have contributed to a 20 percent fall in available water for every citizen between 2000 and 2010.
Droughts are becoming more common and more severe over time. Water shortages are the most dangerous for the Erbil governorate, where 46-56 percent of cropland is affected by droughts, according to the UNDP. This is one of the highest rates in Iraq. By contrast, only 4-5 percent of crops are affected in Dohuk or Sulaimani.
Despite universal drought increases, water shortages are more severe in the south then in the Kurdistan Region. This is because dams in Syria and Turkey have dramatically reduced the flow of water down the Tigris and Euphrates. Fifty percent of the Tigris’ water comes from Turkey, as does 90 percent of the Euphrates’. Water levels have fallen so much on the Iraqi side that salt water has infiltrated the rivers more than 150 kilometers from the Persian Gulf.
Dams upstream of the Kurdistan Region have been far less disruptive. Turkish Dams along the Great Zab are not heavily tapped for irrigation projects, one of the major ways dams reduce water levels downstream.
This could easily change if Iran completes a series of planned dams in the future. Some 60-70 percent of the water upstream from Darbanikhan and Dokan, two of Kurdistan’s largest dams, comes from Iran. “If they follow through, it will be a disaster,” explains Akram Rasul, the head of the KRG’s Directorate of Dams and Reservoirs. Rapidly declining water levels can be catastrophic for the water quality, not to mention ecosystems, agriculture, fishing, hydro-power and oil production.
With exponential increases in water usage due to a growing population and booming economy -- meaning more industrial and agricultural demand -- the region has plans to build more dams. A lot more. While there are three large dams and seven smaller ones under construction, Rasul expects to have 40 dams by 2018.
While the directorate commissions environmental impact assessments (EIAs) for each of the projects, many NGOs like Nature Iraq have expressed concerns about the potential impact of dams. Only time will tell how they will reshape the landscape, affect the region’s plant and animal life, and the flow of water both within the country and to the rest of Iraq.
One area where activists and the directorate agree is that unprocessed sewage is contaminating rivers and dams at a major cost to Kurdish citizens. “Unfortunately, this is in the hands of the municipalities,” Rasul sighs. “All of Erbil’s human waste is dumped into the Greater Zab.”
Groundwater is another issue. The region has approximately 20,000 official wells, not counting many more illegal water sources. A source in the oil and gas industry told Rudaw that one of the first things an oil and gas company does for a local community near an exploration or production site is to build a well. While this is good for the village in the short term, the cumulative increase in water usage -- without planning and management of a central water authority -- could quickly decimate the estimated five million cubic meters of groundwater in the Kurdistan Region.
Rasheed Gergis, head of the Water Reservation Association, worries about responsible water habits more than any other problem. The issue is a lack of incentives, he thinks, not antisocial behavior: people pay for water by property size in the region, not according to a metered usage.
“People are still watering anything and everything they want, at zero additional cost,” he says. “They don’t realize it’s scarce. Kurdistan’s not rich in water, at least if people continue to use it at current rates.”
