Environmental crisis is world’s biggest problem: Iraqi president

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The global environmental crisis is the “world’s biggest problem,” Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashid told Rudaw on Friday during the United Nations climate change conference in Dubai, with Iraq being one of the foremost countries susceptible to the effects of climate change.

“The biggest problem facing the world now is the environment, which covers a number of topics such as global water scarcity, desertification due to climate change. And besides that, we use a lot of oil and gas, which impacts the world’s climate,” Rashid told Rudaw’s Sangar Abdulrahman on the sidelines of the COP28 summit in Dubai.

The Middle East is heating up almost twice as fast as the global average and Iraq is considered one of the nations most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, including water and food insecurity. It is suffering from scorching temperatures, dwindling water resources, and desertification.

“We have to mitigate these losses to set a roadmap for the future,” Rashid said, adding that the steps taken so far to address climate change are not enough to slow down environmental degradation.

In a speech at the conference on Friday, Rashid said that Iraq and Gulf nations “are on the front lines to confront the effects of climate change,” noting that the region will experience rising temperatures even if the world meets its goal to limit global warming to less than two degrees as set out in the Paris climate agreement.

Iraq’s southern marshlands are drying up and a study published earlier this week warned that the Nineveh Plains in the north is an “emergent hotspot” exposed to the risks of climate induced displacement.

Rashid said that Iraq, which joined the Paris agreement late, aims to end associated gas emissions in its oil sector by 2030 and improve efficiency in its electrical grid in order to cut emissions.

Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani and Prime Minister Masrour Barzani are also attending the COP28 conference that runs through December 12 and brings together world leaders, businesses, NGOs, and civil society activists.