BAGHDAD — In
drought-hit
Iraq, six out of 10 households have had their access to drinking
water disrupted and a quarter of farmers have seen crop yields drastically fall
this year, said a survey published Monday.
اضافة اعلان
Iraq has been battered by three years of
drought, low rainfall and reduced river flows, and the UN has ranked it the
fifth most vulnerable country to some key effects of climate change.
The
Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), an aid
group active in the oil-rich but war-scarred country, surveyed 1,341 households
in August in five provinces including Basra, Nineveh, and Anbar.
“We are seeing the continued damage from
Iraq’s climate and water crisis,” said James Munn, the NRC’s country director,
in a statement released alongside the survey findings.
“People are witnessing their fertile land and
crops vanish year after year.”
The NRC study found that “the crisis has had
an immediate impact on access to drinking and irrigation water as well as on
the production of crops,” causing 35 percent of households to reduce the amount
of food they consume.
Sixty-one percent of households “stated that
their access to drinking and domestic water had been disrupted in the last
year”, the NRC said.
In the southern Basra province, where the
Tigris and Euphrates rivers converge before emptying into the Gulf, some areas
have no clean drinking water “due to decreased water levels and high
salination”.
According to the survey, 25 percent of
households that rely on agriculture “witnessed over 90 percent of wheat crop
failure this season”.
“As a result of the impact of drought on crop
production, one quarter of farming households stated that they did not make any
profit from selling their wheat crop this year,” it added.
Apart from wheat, “42 percent of households
surveyed stated that they have seen their production of barley, fruit, and
vegetables go down” this season.
The prolonged drought has displaced many
Iraqis.
Tayseer, a 42-year-old farmer in the
country’s north, told the NRC he may have to leave his land in Hawija due to
income loss.
He used to make 10 million Iraqi dinars
(about $6,850) each season, he said, but added that this year, “I may not even
get 2 million”.
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