“Drought has left a negative impact on the Kurdistan Region. Despite having numerous forests, now more than half of the trees are gone. Therefore, new trees have to be planted and the agriculture sector must be developed,” Bahram Khidir told Rudaw’s Fuad Rahimi on Friday.
Khidir is part of a Kurdistan Region delegation attending the United Nations’ COP28 climate change summit in Dubai.
“Along with the surge in the population of the Kurdistan Region, the range of green land and amount of water - on the ground and underground - have dropped. We have to ensure international support for the Kurdistan Regional Government [KRG] to encounter climate change,” the presidential advisor stated.
He added that Erbil and Baghdad have good cooperation on climate change, noting that the Iraqi delegation at COP28 has promised to support any project the KRG submits at the conference.
Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani has met many world leaders on the sidelines of the event.
The Middle East is heating up almost twice as fast as the global average and Iraq is considered one of the nations most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, suffering with scorching temperatures, dwindling water resources, and desertification.
The KRG is looking to fill gaps in data on the impact of climate change as it takes steps to combat the global threat, a senior advisor to Prime Minister Masrour Barzani said on Friday.
“We are working on having better data on the Kurdistan Region. The data about the whole of Iraq says that it is really in danger - fifth among other countries,” Bayan Sami Abdulrahman, senior advisor to PM Barzani for foreign affairs and climate change, told Rudaw on the sidelines of the COP28 summit.
PM Barzani is also attending the conference with a KRG delegation.
