Walking towards the little boat that he used to use for fishing in the Hammar Marshes south of Dhi Qar, Abu Hussein, a man in his fifties, is deeply worried about the drying up of the waters of the marshes, and the livelihood of his family of more than ten members.
The family's sole breadwinner, Abu Hussein told Rudaw that he ponders leaving the region in order to secure his livelihood and his children elsewhere, calling on the government to take measures to reduce drought and provide water.
Hundreds of families used to live in the Hammar marshes in Dhi Qar, but they migrated after these marshes turned into a barren desert due to drought and climate changes.
A dry, cracked, and lifeless land, this is what the Iraqi marshes look like after being known as green spaces and included on the World Heritage List, but are now deserted after more than 2,000 families left them and more than 1,500 fishermen lost their jobs, according to Ahmed Jaafar Issa, a local agricultural official in Dhi Qar.
Not just the marshes, but also 80 percent of Dhi Qar's farmlands have been damaged due to drought, according to Issa.
“The marshes have lost much of their water share due to the mismanagement within the Ministry of Water Resources by preferring one area over another,” he told Rudaw’s Anmar Ghazi on Saturday.
The swamplands, also known as the Mesopotamian Marshes, are one of the world's largest inland deltas situated between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
Iraq's troubled marshlands were subject to a massive drainage campaign by former dictator Saddam Hussein in 1991, who ordered their drainage as punishment for local communities who were protecting insurgents he sought to hunt down.
Water levels in the Euphrates and Tigris rivers - shared by Iraq, Syria, and Turkey - have dropped considerably in recent years. In the latest stark warning of the threats a heating climate poses to the country, a report by Iraq’s Ministry of Water Resources towards the end of last year predicted that unless urgent action is taken to combat declining water levels, Iraq’s two main rivers will be entirely dry by 2040.
Iraq is the fifth-most vulnerable nation in the world to the effects of climate change, including water and food insecurity, according to the UN.
The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) has long warned that the water available in Iraq is set to decrease by around 20 percent by 2025, threatening the long-term stability of Iraq’s agriculture and industry.
