How dried-out wetlands on the Iran/Iraq border threaten the region
Fires, dust storms, migration and conflict: the deadly chain of consequences from a shrinking wetland in Iran.
- Mesopotamian Marshes on Iran/Iraq border drying out
- Degradation leads to more dust storms, fires, migration
- Oil exploration exacerbates problems
The dust storms that have choked Iranians and Iraqis for weeks and hospitalised thousands, are the canary in the coalmine for a complex environmental disaster unfolding in wetlands straddling the two countries' border.
The Hoor al-Hawizeh wetlands, north of the southern Iraqi city of Basra, are drying out and experts warn that continued decline, including in the connected Hoor al-Azim marshes in Iran, could drive water shortages, migration and even conflict.
"These marshes once acted as natural barriers, trapping fine sediments and maintaining soil moisture," said Hossein Hashemi, an associate professor of water resource engineering at Lund University in Sweden.
"But their shrinkage, caused by upstream dam construction, wartime destruction, and climate change, has exposed vast stretches of loose, dry sediment," he said.
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