Water crisis: Kurdish authorities ignore Iraqi call to cut water intensive crops

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Iraq’s water crisis has led Baghdad’s ministry of agriculture to call for a temporary ban on the planting of water intensive crops. Its counterpart in Erbil, however, says it will ignore the ban, as the Kurdistan Region is not suffering the same degree of water scarcity. 

Rice, white corn, yellow corn, sesame, sun flower, mung beans, and cotton are among the crops facing prohibition.

“The Kurdistan Region doesn’t have a water problem for irrigation and agriculture. We won’t implement the decision, and we can maximize the output of the crops – prohibited by Baghdad – many folds,” Akram Ahmed, director general of dams and water reserves in KRG’s ministry of agriculture, told Rudaw.

He says the prohibitions are largely aimed at lands watered by the Tigris River.

A deepening water crisis in central and southern Iraq is causing growing alarm, pushing Baghdad to take several water conservation measures.

“The agricultural plan for the summer” was modified “because the quantities of water needed for these cereals are not available,” Iraqi ministry of agriculture spokesman Hamid al-Nayef said on Monday, according to AFP.

“The ministry does not take this decision light heartedly,” he added.
The water shortages are being blamed on dam projects built up-river by Turkey, like the controversial Ilisu Dam on the Tigris. Iran has also cut the flow of the Little Zab River into the Kurdistan Region to tend to its own water crisis. Erbil, however, insists the Region can cope.