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Al Bussaya, Muthanna Province, Iraq The wind shook the open desert of Muthanna province mercilessly as Ali Thajeel moved his camel herd across the rugged plain in search of greenery.
A few decades ago, he recalled, April was the time when the sandy soil turned into grassland, before his animals gained weight before the scorching summer heat. But in recent years, his camels have had to settle for scattered patches of mixed grass.
“It’s not raining and the ground is dry. The grass has become a desert. We have to sell some animals to buy food for the rest. That’s what life has become, ”Thajeel said, shielding his face from the dry, dusty air that the kaffiyeh was squeezing tightly.
On a two-day journey across the Muthanna Desert, nomadic shepherds painted a bleak picture of an increasingly inanimate environment where rising temperatures and erratic rains have eroded animal and human maintenance.
Studies Iraq’s temperatures suggest rising by two to seven times faster than global rise United Nations Iraqi temperatures will rise by two degrees and rainfall will drop by nine percent over the next three decades.
Adaptations are already being felt across Iraq, with dust storms occurring more frequently in urban areas as agricultural communities struggle to increase their water shortages and soil salinity.
But in the country’s famous deserts, where the margin of tolerance for weather fluctuations is very small, climate change provides an existential crisis for tribal shepherds.
Once the wells that maintained the livestock were dried up. Nomads rent trucks to transport water from nearby villages rather than from natural water sources.
“This water truck will last only one day,” Kadhum Adshaan said as he emptied its precious contents into a water tank for his animals. “Tomorrow I have to come back for more.”
Nomads rent trucks to transport water from nearby villages rather than from natural water sources [Screengrab]
As we spoke, the clouds were gathering in which Adshaan was expecting the first proper rain shower this year. Soon hopes were dashed when a few drops came out of the sky, barely enough to wet the earth.
“This summer’s rain is useless,” he murmured.
According to data received by the Iraqi government, average annual rainfall has become more irregular in this area since the 1970s, and average annual rainfall over the last twenty years has been 10% lower than in the previous three decades.
Sieged community
The elders say that many Bedouin families gathered in small temporary settlements. With the low density of vegetation, we found only individual tents a few miles apart, as each family needed more land to maintain their flock.
Lack of greenery forces farmers to migrate longer distances in search of food for their livestock, even as potential pasture land is increasingly limited by investment projects and border closures.
“People are fighting over the grass, fighting against each other,” said Rahi Khamis, who maintains a herd of 200 sheep. “There was no problem in the past. Your neighbor was like your brother. “
Summers have become too hot in the traditional traditional tents made of animal skins, which encourage many to find rest in the surrounding villages and towns, where they rent agricultural land to feed their livestock.
Rahi Khamis says he never thought of leaving this life and will never do so [Screengrab]
To pay for water and land use, shepherds have no choice but to sell their only property – livestock – which has steadily reduced the size of the herd.
The growing difficulty has fueled the intergenerational rift, with the elderly doubling down to take care of their livelihoods while the young look to the secure future of other places.
“I never thought about leaving this life and I never will. I feel comfortable here from a psychological point of view, “said 46-year-old Khamis as he looked across the wide plains.” But young people don’t obey me. They don’t like this life. “
Khamis ’anger is directed at his 17-year-old son Sajad, who has left the family’s humble desert home to work as a porter at the nearby Nassriyah wholesale market.
“They say they want to go out, meet people, get air conditioning and study. Here, we live without all these things, ”said Khamis, who, like many others, has no formal education or other source of income.
The exodus of young people means that those who are left behind have to take on a larger share of the tedious work they need to maintain large groups of animals.
There are no statistics on how many Bedouins remained in the cities, but the elderly believe that only hundreds remain, creating a fear of extinction in their lives for a generation.
‘Nobody helps’
Although Iraq is ranked among the countries with the greatest impact of climate change, the government’s response has been hampered by decades of conflict and instability and oil dependence.
“There is no policy to look at climate change in a systematic way,” Ali Al Saffar, director of the International Energy Agency for the Middle East and North Africa Program, told Al Jazeera.
“In general, the relationship between Iraq and the wider climate debate. What will climate change do to our energy markets, what will oil demand do?”
Iraq is the sixth largest oil producer in the world, accounting for nearly 90% of government revenue from oil production.
The Iraqi oil industry also contributes significantly to global warming, as its oil fields do not have gas capture facilities that would prevent greenhouse gases from being released into the atmosphere. According to a recent study by Bellingcat, in 2018, oil fields around Basra emitted more gas than the combined Saudi Arabia, China, Canada and India.
Iraq is the sixth largest oil producer in the world [File: Atef Hassan/Reuters]
At the Paris climate summit in 2016, Iraq agreed to a minimum reduction of all emissions by 2035 and a reduction of up to 13 percent if the country received the necessary economic and technical assistance.
But as in many other countries, Iraq is lagging behind the mandate of the Paris agreement, which was weakened as a result of the withdrawal of the previous U.S. administration and the diversion of attention and funding to other places.
“The world’s national commitments are behind where the world should be to reduce the temperature rise to a maximum of two degrees Celsius,” said Sami Dimassi, a representative of the West Asian region in the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).
Last year, UNEP began working with the Iraqi government on climate projections to assess the vulnerability of different communities and achieve adaptation measures.
“[For nomadic pastoralists], may be to change grazing patterns to allow for regeneration and perhaps to expand into the area they are moving around, perhaps by examining the different composition of livestock, ”Dimassi said.
But the nomads, distrustful and distrustful of foreigners, expect little from a government struggling to provide most of the basic services between a major corruption and a rather tedious bureaucracy.
“No one in the government is helping. We are dependent on ourselves alone, ”Kadhum Adshaan said.
“Bedouins will go extinct and all animals will go extinct because no one is helping.”
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