Iraq's marshes return

COURTESY OF CURTIS RICHARDSON

Duke University's Curtis J. Richardson, a wetlands expert, was part of the first scientific team to visit the Iraqi Mesopotamian marshes after Saddam Hussein's fall in 2003. Lying between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the marshes - once nearly twice the size of the Everglades - were the main stopover on the Siberia-Africa bird migration route, and a crucial filter that cleansed the rivers as they flowed into the Persian Gulf.

Saddam Hussein's regime systematically destroyed the marshes, perhaps in search of oil, perhaps to speed the march into Kuwait, and forced the Marsh Arabs, the indigenous people of the area who lived on islands made of reeds, out of their homes. But in 2003, as Baghdad fell, local people began blowing up dams and ripping out dikes, allowing water to return. On his month-long visit in June 2003, Richardson recalls, he and his colleagues were greeted warmly. "People were friendly, everyone was waving," he says. On his second and last visit, in 2004, there were armed guards everywhere, exploded vehicles along the roads, and he and his colleagues were stopped at gunpoint and threatened. "It just got ugly," he says. "The Iraqis became very worried about riding with us, too."

He doesn't expect to be back in the country in person any time soon. "It's way too dangerous for us to be there right now," he says. Richardson's colleague, Barry Warner of the University of Waterloo, hasn't been to Iraq yet; as a Canadian, he's not allowed. Instead, Richardson and Warner, who heads the Canada-Iraq Marshlands Initiative, are working from afar with their Iraqi colleagues on the ground. "I'm very much a field person, a hands-on kind of person, so it is rather tough to be teaching and training and collaborating with my Iraqi colleagues when I can't actually get wet and muddy too," Warner says. He communicates with his Iraqi colleagues by chatting over the Internet almost daily. "It works very well in Iraq, and it's free."

Jamal Abaychi, a senior advisor to the Iraqi Ministry of the Environment and a professor at the University of Baghdad, is one man on the ground. Working within the marshes is completely safe for him and his colleagues and students, six of whom are doing theses on the marshes, Abaychi says. "The tribal leaders in the marshes are very cooperative; we have a sort of personal relationship with them," he says. "They usually help very much the research team. They are in full control within their areas."

While Iraqi scientists don't face security risks, they are working under tough conditions, with temperatures currently hovering around 50ﾰ C. Reflooding of the marshes has made the situation more tolerable in the region. Ambient temperatures in southern Iraq and the northern part of the Arabian Gulf have dropped by about 5ﾰ C, Abaychi says. "Even people who live in the south of Iraq, like in Basra and Nasiriyah, they have noticed a difference."

The marsh initiative, on which Canada has spent $3 million (Can), just entered its third year, and has gathered a year's worth of "real data," Warner says. The United Nations and Italy are also helping with the effort. "We've probably got the most up-to-date and most accurate and most recent set of data from the marshes," he says.

Today, according to Abaychi, some 40% to 50% of the marshes have been re-inundated, accompanied by a "remarkable recovery" of plant and animal life. People are returning too, both to traditional lives within the marshes and to farm along their outskirts. "I've seen villages that have been abandoned and now are filled with people," Abaychi says.

Thanks in large part to two years of record snowpack melt from Turkey and Iran, there's plenty of clean water flowing through the marshes. This surfeit won't last. Iraq is expected to need nearly 95 billion cubic meters of water by 2030, but only half this amount will be available once Turkey and Syria complete massive dam projects now underway. Iran is building a dike that cuts straight through the Al Hawizeh, the single wetland area that was not drained, and Iran is planning to sell the water on its side of the marsh to Kuwait. So another key challenge for the country will be to determine how the water should be allocated to the marshes.

Still, the restoration so far is already impressive, says Abaychi. "You can't describe it; it is something amazing," he says. The drying up of the marshes was a global environmental disaster, he adds. "When we see that they are coming back it gives us a very happy feeling."