Friday, November 26, 2021

Climate change impacts Iraq

 

Climate change will impact the entire world but, yes, some areas will be hit harder than others.  AFP reports:


Iraq could suffer a 20-percent drop in water resources by 2050 due to climate change, the World Bank said Wednesday, warning of repercussions on growth and jobs.        

Water is a crucial issue for the oil-rich country of 40 million that is facing an acute energy crisis, compounded by increasingly severe droughts and low rainfall.

"Without action, water constraints will lead to large losses across multiple sectors of the economy and come to affect more and more vulnerable people," the World Bank's Saroj Kumar Jha said in a statement accompanying a new report.

"By 2050, a temperature increase of one degree Celsius, and a precipitation decrease of 10 percent would cause a 20 percent reduction of available freshwater" in Iraq, the report said.



Iraq is one that will be hit hard and the water issue is already worsening due to other factors. Zvi Bar'el (HAARATZ) reports:


Iraq's water resources minister, Mahdi Rashid Al-Hamdani, was overflowing with optimism when he returned from a visit to Turkey in October. “The Turks promised to increase the water quota that will flow into the Euphrates River to Iraq” was his good news.

For a long time Iraq has been suffering a water deficit estimated at around 11 billion cubic meters a year, something only expected to worsen as the country’s population grows. Farmers are reporting that large swaths of farmland are drying up because of the severe drought and climate change. Temperatures have topped 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) in the summer, fruit has shriveled, seeds aren't sprouting and even water for drinking and bathing is lacking.

[. . .]


Al-Hamdani may have been received warmly in Turkey, and the two sides even agreed to establish a joint research institute to study water issues. But one number was missing from the meeting: How much water would Iraq receive from Turkey?

This question still doesn’t have an answer because Turkey continues to develop its Great Anatolia Project, the construction of 22 dams and 19 hydroelectric power plants that will greatly reduce the amount of water flowing into the Tigris and Euphrates to Iraq and Syria.



Meanwhile MEANS TV notes: 


Days after Biden told world leaders that he is committed to slowing climate change with "action, and not words," he oversaw one of the largest oil and gas lease sales in American history.
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The Biden administration oversaw one of the largest oil and gas lease sales in American history, days after Glasgow climate summit.
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