Watch .. In Iraq, sanitation and climate threaten the marshes

The marshes – which were historically known as the home of the “Garden of Eden” and today belong to the world heritage – are under threat more than ever due to poor wastewater management, as well as climate change.

Heavy sewage water flows from sewage pipes directly into the Chibayish Marshlands, which are one of the most important water bodies in southern Iraq, threatening to pollute the life environment of the site. Read also The marshes of Iraq … a Sumerian magic that resists time Life returns to the arteries of the marshes of Iraq The host of the marshes of Iraq puts it on the World Heritage List The waters of the Iraqi marshes are a wealth that is threatened with depletion

In a country where the state lacks the capacity to provide basic services, 70 percent of Iraq’s industrial waste is dumped directly into rivers or into the sea, according to data compiled by the United Nations and academics.

Jassim Al-Asadi, director of the non-governmental organization Nature Iraq, which deals with the protection of the marshes, says that the heavy polluted sewage plant that is harmful to the environment flows into the marshes without any treatment, and this affects the diversity of plant and animal life.

Al-Asadi, who left his job at the Ministry of Water Resources to devote himself to volunteer work to protect the environment, added that sewage water indirectly affects human health through what he consumes of animal products whose manufacture depends on cows and buffaloes in the marshes.

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For his part, Nader Mohsen, a buffalo breeder and fisherman who lives in Chibayish in Dhi Qar governorate, says that most of the buffaloes today cannot drink from places near the drainage pipes and are forced to travel several kilometers inside the marshes to find unpolluted water.

Referring to the dead fish floating on the surface of the water, Mohsen adds, “The sewage water has caused the death of many fish and now threatens all the animals that subsist on the waters of the marshes.”

Unpleasant odors

Pollution is only one of the threats to the sprawling water bodies, which are the largest inland deltas in the world.

This rich habitat extending between the Tigris and the Euphrates, where sugar cane grows and many types of birds and fish live, barely escaped destruction during the era of the late President Saddam Hussein, who ordered the marshes to be drained in 1991 after they became a haven for the opposition.

The draining reduced the marshes to half their area, which was estimated at 15,000 square kilometers in 1991.

A few years ago, Mohsen and the other marsh dwellers thought they would see a paradise flourishing again. The population of these water bodies is estimated at several thousand families spread in the area extending between the governorates of Maysan, Dhi Qar and Basra, and it is dominated by a rural and tribal character.

After the year 2003, the water returned to those areas after removing the earth dams that were built during the Saddam period. More than 200 species of birds and dozens of species of wild animals have returned to the area. Tourists, most of them Iraqis, have also begun flocking to the area for boat tours and grilled fish.

But the unpleasant odors flowing from the sewage causes people to avoid the area now, while the local authorities say they are not solely responsible for not treating the sewage, as some residents make illegal connections to the rainwater drainage systems.

Climate change

Director of Dhi Qar sewage, engineer Haider Razzaq, says that the reason for the lack of treatment units for sewage plants is due to their high cost, as the need reaches about 100 billion Iraqi dinars ($ 69 million).

He adds, “We now have two projects for treatment plants, one of which was supposed to start work on it since 2015, but this did not materialize due to the financial crisis.”

But Al-Asadi, who recently worked with European and American experts to find a solution to this problem, says that the solution is simple and natural, “and it is to use plants to clean the water of the marshes through a technique called plant technology. Unfortunately, the authorities did not pay any attention to these proposals.”

He added that when UNESCO included the marshes on the World Heritage List in 2016, Iraq pledged to preserve the ecosystem and provide functional services to the marsh communities.

But today, while the United Nations classifies Iraq as “the fifth country in the world exposed to the threats” of climate change, rehabilitating the marshes is no longer an important issue for heritage preservation, but rather a matter of survival.

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) warned in 2019 that climate change is expected to reduce annual rainfall in Iraq, which will lead to more dust storms, lower agricultural productivity and increased water scarcity.

The United Nations Environment Program says that in 2015 every Iraqi had 2,100 cubic meters of water available annually, and by 2025 that amount will drop to 1,750 cubic meters, threatening the long-term stability of agriculture and industry in the country, as well as threatening the health of the country’s population. 40 million people.