After his father died in 2017, he received a share of the sale of his dad's home and saw his opportunity to leave.The days of entering left, right, left, right, up, down, up, down, a, b to cheat your way through a video game are long gone.
"When we'd discuss our hardships with local officials from the government, they'd tell us they had no solutions as this is a problem that comes from beyond just Iraq's borders."Īs a fisherman in the marshlands, Ali struggled with dwindling stock.
In the impoverished city of Nasiriyah, about 60 miles from his original home in the marshlands, Hameed Hassab Ali is working as a taxi driver to try to support his nine children.Īs the temperatures in the marshlands soared and rainfall lessened year after year, the changing climate became "a central topic of discussion in our family or tribal meetings," says Ali. Those who've left are forced to adapt to life outside the marshes Many migrate to Iraqi cities, placing additional pressure on urban areas that already suffer from poor municipal services and infrastructure. In July 2019, the International Organization for Migration reported having identified 21,314 internally displaced people from Iraq's southern and central governorates - where the marshlands are located - due to the lack of access to clean water. In a country where years of war have already uprooted many lives, displacement for reasons of climate and environment is now becoming a common reality. But they say it's increasingly difficult to find good places to settle with space for their buffalo, and herders are becoming more concentrated in the shrinking marsh areas. Others are trying to move to other parts of the marshlands that haven't dried out. experts say Iraq is losing some 155 miles of arable land every year to desertification and soil erosion. Experts say evaporation caused by extreme heat compounds the problem. In Iraq's south, the reduced river flows have caused saltwater currents from the Persian Gulf to intrude further upstream, tainting the freshwater of Iraq's UNESCO-protected marshlands. Hameed al-Nayef, a spokesperson for Iraq's agriculture ministry, tells NPR that drought conditions this year are so bad that the country can produce on only about half the land it normally would. United Nations experts say Iraq is losing some 155 miles of arable land every year to desertification and soil erosion. In Diyala province in mid-October, the temperature reached almost 100 degrees Fahrenheit.Ī study used by the United Nations Environment Programme found that Iraq is the fifth-most vulnerable country in the world to decreased water and food availability, extreme temperatures and associated health problems. Iraq's average annual temperatures are increasing at nearly double the rate of Earth's.
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