Iraq will discuss water issue with Iran, Turkey at 36th FAO Regional Conference

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iraq will discuss water security issues with Turkey and Iran as Baghdad hosts the 36th round of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Regional Conference for the Near East and North Africa, the Iraqi minister of agriculture said on Monday.

“We have a meeting with the Turkish Minister of Agriculture to discuss trade exchange, economic issues and water problems,” Mohammed Karim al-Khafaji told Iraqi state media. “We will invest in the presence of the Iranian and Turkish delegations to discuss the issue of water and its extensions.”

Despite facing a strong wave of cold weather, rain, and snow in January, Iraq still suffers from the long-term effects of climate change.

Officials have warned for years that dams built by Iran and Turkey have contributed to a growing water crisis in the southern and central provinces of Iraq, as well as the northern Kurdistan Region. Iran has built around 600 dams over the last 30 years, cutting or diverting river courses from its territory into Iraq.

Last year, Iraqi Minister of Water Resources Mahdi Rashid al-Hamdani accused Iran of digging tunnels and trying to alter the natural water flows. His ministry in December announced the completion of procedures to file a lawsuit with the International Court of Justice against Iran, claiming that unless urgent action is taken to combat both declining water levels and climate change, Iraq’s two main rivers, the Euphrates and the
Tigris, will be entirely dry by 2040.

Iraq and Syria, which also share the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, have signed up to the UN Watercourses Convention of 1997, but Turkey and Iran have not.

The World Bank warned in October that Iraq is running out of water with devastating consequences on the country’s economy, stressing the failure to manage water resources as a key damaging factor.

Iraq is the fifth-most vulnerable nation in the world to the effects of climate change, including water and food insecurity. Last year, low rainfall levels and high temperatures caused by climate change depleted water supplies across the country. Much of Iraq’s agricultural lands depend on irrigation, and dams and reservoirs were at record-low levels in the summer of 2021.

Iraqi President Barham Salih in November virtually addressed the United Nations Twenty-Sixth Global Climate Summit and said that “desertification affects 39% of our country and 54% of our agricultural lands are degraded because of salination caused by reducing water flow of the Tigris and Euphrates. Seven million Iraqis have already been affected by drought, climate change and the risk of displacement.”

The Deputy Director-General of the FAO on Monday told Iraqi state media that the “holding of the 36th session of the FAO Conference comes at a very difficult and challenging time, including water scarcity, climate and the Corona pandemic, in addition to the abnormal climatic conditions
that Iraq is going through.”