ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iraq is not currently experiencing a drought; however, it requires 90 billion cubic meters of water annually. Amid rising climate change risks, predicting future water availability has become increasingly difficult, placing women at higher risk of harm, panelists discussed on the second day of the Erbil Forum 2025.
On the second day of the three-day event, panelists discussed key agendas, including climate change and its impact on human rights violations in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region.
Most of Iraq’s central and southern areas are suffering from drought, and the whole country has seen less rainfall in January compared to the same period last year, the Iraqi Ministry of Agriculture announced in late January.
“We still are not in a drought period. We are in a poor period, but we are just a step before going into a drought period," regarding the water budget in Iraq, Torhan al-Mufti, an advisor to the Iraqi prime minister on water. “If we have a good season, it means we will need 90 billion cubic meters per year. In a poor season or drought, we will need 50 billion.”
This year has seen adequate rainfall, whereas the past four years had been marked by scarce precipitation, approaching drought conditions, he added.
Zaki Shubber, a lawyer and international expert in freshwater law and conflict resolution, emphasized that most of the products we use are closely tied to water resources. She also underscored the critical importance of water and the significant role climate change plays in its availability and sustainability.
“It is the unpredictability of water availability in climate change that no longer allows us to model and forecast how much water is going to be available. We have erratic precipitation patterns, so rainfall comes at different times in different quantities and in different places,” Shubber told the Erbil event, which is being organized by Rudaw Research Center.
Shubber emphasized the significant role of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in supplying Iraq's water resources and highlighted the high risk of their decline due to ongoing climate challenges.
Climate change and environmental challenges are global issues that impact everyone, she said.
“When we talk about water, everyone will say how important it is, how we need to value it and how we need to respect it, but when it comes to taking action, it is often more complicated. When it comes to putting money into the projects the measures that we need to address on certainty and all the other issues that affect water because it is a factor that comes amongst many other factors affecting water and that certainly affects the demand for water not just the supply of water but we have to go beyond talking about it we have to go beyond saying that we will do something and actually do something and put the financing that is needed,” she added.
When facing environmental crises, comes economic challenges as well and as a result, women are disproportionately affected, as coping mechanisms within families often include early marriage and restricted access to education and healthcare services, Sheri Kraham Talabani President and Co-Founder of SEED Foundation, said during the panel.
“Women and girls are fourteen times more likely to be harmed during environmental disasters; at least 60% of the deaths in an environmentally related extreme climate event are women,” Talabani added.
In countries like Iraq, women and girls face greater challenges in coping with disasters due to limited access to resources, information, and support, making them disproportionately affected by such crises, she emphasized.
