As salinity levels in the country’s south have reached record highs, making already sparse water unfit for human consumption and killing livestock, an Iraqi farmer has watched her poultry die.
Umm Ali, 40, a resident of the once-dense Al-Mashab marshes of southern Iraq’s Basra province, said, “We used to drink, wash, and cook with water from the river, but now it hurts.”
She claimed that dozens of her ducks and 15 chickens have been killed by brackish water just this season.
The widowed mother of three described her experience as “crying and grieving,” as “I felt as though all my hard work had been wasted.”
A country that has suffered years of drought and low rainfall, including Iraq, has been severely affected by climate change.
Salt and pollution levels have increased as a result of decreasing freshwater flows, particularly in the south, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers converge before settling into the Gulf.
Khaled Shamal, a spokesman for the Iraqi Ministry of Water Resources, said, “We haven’t seen such high levels of salinity in 89 years.”
According to a report from the Water Ministry, salinity levels recorded in the central Basra province increased to almost 29 000 parts per million last month, up from 2,600ppm last year.
The United States Geological Survey recommends that ocean water salinity levels be less than 1, 000ppm, while freshwater should have no more than 1, 000ppm of dissolved salts.
According to Hasan al-Khateeb, an expert from the University of Kufa in Iraq, the Tigris and the Euphrates converge at Basra’s Shatt al-Arab waterway, which is “laden with pollutants accumulated along their course.”
The Euphrates’ water levels have fallen off in recent weeks, and Iraq’s artificial lake reserves have fallen to their lowest level in recent memory.
Khateeb warned that the Gulf’s seawater was being held back by the Shatt al-Arab’s water levels, which had fallen dramatically.
Zulaykha Hashem, a farmer, claimed the area’s water has become very slick this year and that she must wait to see if the weather will improve before irrigating her crop of pomegranates, figs, and berries.
Nearly a quarter of women in Basra and the surrounding provinces are employed in agriculture, according to the UN.
“We can’t even leave,” the statement read. What direction would we take?” Hashem remarked, in a nation where farmers are frequently stranded in a cycle of water crises due to rising salinity and drought.
According to the UN’s International Organization for Migration, Iraq’s climate-induced displacement is causing the desert to become atrophied. Palm groves, citrus trees, and other crops are all threatened by rising water salinity.
According to the organization, circa 170 000 people were displaced in central and southern Iraq as of October last year as a result of climate-related factors.
Maryam Salman, who is in her 30s, recently left nearby Missan province for Basra in search of some water, hoping that her buffalo would enjoy the Shatt al-Arab.
Salman, a mother of three children, said that rising salinity is not the only issue facing the current situation.
She claimed that neither summer nor winter have access to water.
Turkiye is where the Tigris and Euphrates come from, and Iraqi authorities have repeatedly attributed dams across the border to significantly reducing their flows.
According to authorities, less than 35 percent of the water that flows from the two rivers is actually supplied to Iraq, a nation with ineffective water management systems after decades of war and neglect.
According to Khateeb from the University of Kufa, Iraq must also work on desalination projects in the Shatt al-Arab region in addition to claiming its share of the rivers.
A desalination project with a capacity of 1 million cubic meters per day was announced by the government in Basra in July.
Locals claimed that brackish water has an effect on fish stocks as well.
Hamdiyah Mehdi claims that her husband, a fisherman, leaves her house more frequently.
She attributed her children’s persistent rash to Shatt al-Arab’s “murky and salty water” and his short-tempered temper to his long days without a catch.
Mehdi, 52, expressed concern for the family’s emotional state as well as their livelihood and ability to survive.
