A local farmer, Abbas Radi, feels heartbroken when he sees what the land that used to be the main source of livelihood for him and his family has turned into. As a result of water scarcity, he has lost many of his fruit trees.
“We are in the month of April, and there is still no fruit,” Radi told Rudaw’s Anmar Ghazi on Tuesday, adding that the salination level of the water increases this time of the year, “killing everything.”
With summer around the corner, Basra will once again endure the repercussions of water scarcity and high temperatures the season brings.
In addition to bad water management in Iraq, neighboring Iran is also to blame for the scarcity, as Tehran in recent years has reduced the amount of water flowing into the country.
Despite being home to the Tigris, Euphrates, and the Shatt al-Arab, as well as three ports, Basra technically has plenty of water access, but it still cannot provide clean water for drinking or for its agriculture.
Examinations of the water have shown that the province's resources are not suitable for drinking and locals have been advised not to use them.
In 2018, more than 100,000 people were hospitalized after ingesting the polluted water.
A senior adviser at the Iraqi ministry of water resources warned last week that the country's water reserves have decreased by half since last year, due to a combination of drought, a lack of rainfall, and declining river levels.
"Water reserves are far lower than what we had last year, by about 50 percent because of poor rainfall and the quantities arriving from neighboring countries," Ministry of Water Resources adviser Aoun Diab told AFP, attributing the concerning situation to "the successive years of drought: 2020, 2021 and 2022".
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.
Water pollution is also a high concern for officials. The spokesperson for the water ministry, Ali Radi, told state media on Thursday that, "water poisoning or contamination is a very dangerous matter."
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. According to another concerning report by the United Nations, dams built in neighboring Turkey and Iran have also dramatically reduced the combined volume of the Tigris and Euphrates by up to 60 percent.
Iraq is the fifth-most vulnerable nation in the world to the effects of climate change, including water and food insecurity. Low rainfall levels and high temperatures caused by climate change are depleting water supplies across the country. Much of Iraq’s agricultural lands depend on irrigation, but dams and reservoirs were at record-low levels this summer.
