Water salinity hurting farmers, livestock in Iraq

Iraqi farmer Umm Ali has watched her poultry die as salinity levels in the country’s south hit record highs, rendering already scarce water unfit for human consumption and killing livestock.

“We used to drink, wash and cook with water from the river, but now it’s hurting us,” said Umm Ali, 40, who lives in the once watery Al Mashab marshes of southern Iraq’s Basra province.

This season alone, she said brackish water has killed dozens of her ducks and 15 chickens.

“I cried and grieved, I felt as if all my hard work had been wasted,” said the widowed mother of three.

Iraq, a country heavily impacted by climate change, has been ravaged for years by drought and low rainfall.

Declining freshwater flows have raised salt and pollution levels, particularly further south where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers converge before spilling into the Gulf.

“We haven’t seen such high levels of salinity in 89 years,” Iraq’s water ministry spokesman Khaled Shamal said.

Last month, salinity levels recorded in central Basra province soared to around 29,000 parts per million compared to 2,600 ppm last year, according to a report from the ministry.

Freshwater should contain less than 1,000 ppm of dissolved salts, while ocean water salinity levels are around 35,000 ppm, according to the US Geological Survey.

The Tigris and Euphrates converge at Basra’s Shatt Al Arab waterway “laden with pollutants accumulated along their course,” said Hasan Al Khateeb, an expert from Iraq’s University of Kufa.

In recent weeks, the Euphrates has seen its lowest water levels in decades, and Iraq’s artificial lake reserves are at their lowest in recent history.

Khateeb warned that the Shatt Al Arab’s water levels had plummeted and it was failing to hold back the seawater from the Gulf.

Farmer Zulaykha Hashem, 60, said the water in the area had become very brackish this year, adding that she has to wait for the situation to improve in order to irrigate her crop of pomegranate trees, figs and berries. According to the United Nations, almost a quarter of women in Basra and nearby provinces work in agriculture.

“We cannot even leave. Where would we go?” Hashem said, in a country where farmers facing drought and rising salinity often find themselves trapped in a cycle of water crisis.

Agence France-Presse