ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iraqi authorities and volunteers launched a nationwide campaign on Saturday to remove invasive water hyacinth from rivers and clean riverbanks, as the country seeks to protect dwindling water resources and tackle environmental pollution.
The campaign brought together the Baghdad Municipality, the Environmental Police, the Ministry of Water Resources, the Ministry of Environment, and civil society groups. Similar cleanup operations were carried out in Wasit, Babil, and Diwaniyah provinces.
Officials warned that the rapidly spreading aquatic plant poses a serious threat to Iraq’s fragile water ecosystems by blocking sunlight, reducing aquatic life, and consuming large amounts of water.
“The danger of this invasive plant lies in its surface spread, which blocks the sunlight that is essential for photosynthesis,” Baghdad Environmental Police spokesperson Mustafa Abdul-Hussein told Rudaw's Mustafa Goran.
“The passage of these rays to aquatic organisms and fish wealth is vital for maintaining the ecological balance. Therefore, its spread leads to this blockage, which ultimately results in a reduction of these aquatic resources,” he added.
The campaign comes amid Iraq’s status as the fifth-most vulnerable nation in the world to the effects of climate change, according to a 2023 UN report as well as campaigns tackling pollution in the Tigris River in Baghdad dating back to 2018 from a number of civil society organizations.
Abdul-Hussein also warned that the plant worsens Iraq’s water challenges.
“Furthermore, it absorbs vast amounts of water at a time when the country is already suffering from water scarcity,” he said.
Water hyacinth is considered one of the world’s fastest-growing invasive aquatic plants. It can form dense mats on water surfaces, obstruct irrigation canals, reduce oxygen levels, and threaten fish populations.
Iktifa al-Hasnawi, administrative deputy at the Ministry of Environment, said the plant cannot be permanently eradicated because its seeds can regenerate over time.
“Consequently, this plant cannot be eradicated permanently because its seeds will start growing again after a while,” Hasnawi said.
She stressed the need for careful removal operations to prevent the plant from spreading further.
“We must be very careful when removing it so that the river current doesn't sweep it to other locations,” she said.
Hasnawi added that the cleanup efforts need to be repeated regularly.
“We believe these campaigns must be repeated periodically—on a monthly basis—and continuously monitored by the Ministry of Environment, because this plant causes severe environmental issues as well as water resource problems,” she said.
Officials said they are also exploring ways to recycle the removed plants and convert them into organic fertilizer rather than simply disposing of them.
Iraq depends heavily on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, but large-scale dam projects in Turkey - including the Southeastern Anatolia Project (known as GAP in Turkish) - have reduced downstream flows to less than 40 percent of historic levels. Declining rainfall, rising temperatures, upstream water controls, and decades of mismanagement have further compounded the crisis.
However, Iraq's water challenges extend beyond shortages to include the quality of its most important water source.
Environmentalists warn that escalating pollution levels could further damage the river’s ecosystem, threatening both its practical use and its historic significance as one of Iraq’s most iconic natural resources.
