The Demise of Mesopotamian Marshlands

UN Photo

Around 85 per cent of the Mesopotamian marshlands - the largest wetland in the Middle East and one of the most outstanding freshwater ecosystems in the world - have been lost mainly as a result of drainage and damming, according to a report released by the United Nations Environment Programme.

Despite intermittent warnings against the imminent decline of the Mesopotamian marshlands, there has been little immediate action to avoid such a fate, the report of UNEP explains. Iraq’s difficult situation in the past decade has limited access to and hindered monitoring of events in the marshlands. As a result, this major ecological disaster, broadly comparable in extent and rapidity to the drying of the Aral Sea and the deforestation of large tracts of Amazonia, has gone virtually unreported until now.

The cause of the decline is mainly as a result of damming upstream, as well as drainage schemes since the 1970s. The Tigris and the Euphrates are among the most intensively dammed rivers in the world. In the past forty years, the two rivers have been fragmented by the construction of more than 30 large dams, whose storage capacity is several times greater than the volume of both rivers. By turning off the tap, dams have substantially reduced the water available for downstream ecosystems and eliminated the floodwaters that nourished the marshlands.

The immediate cause of marshland loss, however, has been the massive drainage works implemented in southern Iraq in the early 1990s, following the second Gulf War.

Although some of these engineering works were meant to deal with chronic salinization in the inter-fluvial region, historically Mesopotamia’s main environmental problem, they were expanded into a full-fledged scheme to drain the marshlands.

Recent satellite images provide hard evidence that the once extensive marshlands have dried up and regressed into desert, with vast stretches salt encrusted. Furthermore, satellite imagery shows only a limited area of the marshlands having been reclaimed for agricultural purposes.

A small northern fringe of the Al-Hawizeh marsh, straddling the Iran-Iraq border (known as Hawr Al-Azim in Iran), is all that remains. Even this last vestige is rapidly dwindling as its water supply is impounded by new dams and diverted for irrigation purposes.

The collapse of Marsh Arab society, a distinct indigenous people who have inhabited the marshlands for millennia, adds a human dimension to this environmental disaster. Around 40,000 of the estimated half-million Marsh Arabs are living in refugee camps in Iran, while the rest are internally displaced within Iraq. A 5,000-year-old culture, heir to the ancient Sumerians and Babylonians, is in serious jeopardy of coming to an abrupt end.

Ataturk Dam. Photo courtesy of Ed Kashi

The impact of marshland desiccation on the area’s teeming wildlife has been equally devastating, with significant implications to global biodiversity from Siberia to southern Africa. A key site for migratory bird species, the marshlands’ disappearance has placed an estimated 40 species of waterfowl at risk and caused serious reductions in their numbers. Mammals and fish that existed only in the marshlands are now considered extinct. Coastal fisheries in the northern Gulf, dependent on the marshlands for nursery and spawning grounds, have also experienced a sharp decline.

Despite this tragic human and environmental catastrophe, UNEP believes that there is hope. Bold measures by the custodians of this natural treasure for the conservation of the remaining transboundary Al-Hawizeh/Al-Azim marshes need to be taken before it is too late. UNEP also calls on Iraq and other riparian countries and international donors to give the Mesopotamian marshlands a new lease on life by re-evaluating the role of water engineering works and modifying them where necessary, with a long-term view to reinstating managed flooding.

Finally, UNEP proposes an integrated river basin approach involving the three main riparian countries (Iraq, Syria and Turkey, as well as Iran for the Tigris tributaries) to manage decreasing water resources sustainably and reverse negative environmental trends in the region. To continue in present ways would spell the wholesale ecological demise of lower Mesopotamia, and ultimately undermine the foundation of life for future generations.

UNEP therefore urges riparian countries to re-initiate dialogue and adopt an international agreement on sharing the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates for the benefit of the people and nature, and to ensure an adequate water supply to the marshes. To stimulate and better advise this process, UNEP, in collaboration with regional organizations, is carrying out a comprehensive scientific assessment of the Tigris-Euphrates basin, which should provide the scientific underpinnings for the improved management of the twin rivers.

Mesopotamian marshlands have effectively been relegated to the history books, a landscape of the past. A generalised classification of marshland land cover in 1973-1976 and 2000 is shown in the maps below - the principal aim has been to highlight changes in the area of water and vegetation. In total, at least 7,600 km of primary wetlands (excluding the seasonal and temporary flooded areas) disappeared between 1973 and 2000. Most of the change, however, occurred between 1991 and 1995.

1973

2000

Links:
‘Garden of Eden’ in Southern Iraq likely to disappear completely in five years unless urgent action is taken