The “extreme drought” in Iraq, Syria and Iran would not have happened without global warming, which is caused “mainly” by the burning of oil, gas and coal, according to an expert report published on Wednesday.
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High temperatures due to climate change have “made droughts much more likely – about 25 times more likely in Syria and Iraq and 16 times more likely in Iran,” says the World Weather Attribution (WWA) study.
The document highlights that “years of conflict and political instability” have paralyzed countries’ response to this drought and caused a “humanitarian catastrophe.”
Under current conditions, these climatic episodes are likely to occur at least once a decade.
“Without climate change, caused mainly by the burning of oil, gas and coal, the drought would not have occurred,” claim experts from WWA, a network specializing in this type of analysis.
The study covers the period from July 2020 to June 2023 in two areas where drought was particularly severe: Iran and the Tigris and Euphrates basins, the mythical rivers that originate in Turkey and flow through Syria and Iraq.
“These two regions are currently experiencing an “extreme drought”, according to the American monitoring scale,” underlines the press release announcing the release of the report.
According to the study, “human-caused climate change has increased the intensity of such droughts to such an extent that they would not have been considered as such in a world 1.2 degrees colder” – the climate before the industrial era. “
“After fairly good rainfall in 2020 and good harvests, there were three years of low rainfall, followed by very high temperatures, leading to a drought with acute impacts on access to drinking water in agriculture,” summarizes Friederike Otto, climatologist at Grantham , together with the Institute of Imperial College London.
“Not very optimistic”
During an online conference, climate researcher Mohammad Rahimi from Iran’s Semnan University (North) called for better resource management.
“It has never rained much in our region, that is normal. What is new is the rise in temperature,” emphasizes the expert involved in the study.
“We will lose much of our precipitation to evaporation, and if temperatures continue to rise in the coming years, we can expect more evaporation and plant transpiration,” he predicts. “I’m not very optimistic about the future.”
In Iraq, one of the world’s largest oil producers, or in war-torn Syria, AFP journalists regularly note the effects of climate change and this drought, which affects the most disadvantaged populations.
Both countries have experienced a drastic decline in agricultural production in recent years, particularly in wheat-rich regions. Likewise, the decline in river flow and water pollution have affected fishing.
“Water crisis”
By September 2022, the drought in Syria had led to the displacement of around two million people living in rural areas, reminds WWA. In Iran, water shortages are causing “tensions” with neighboring countries, just as poor harvests have led to an explosion in food inflation.
Tensions over water distribution are rising in Iraq. According to a UN report, almost one in five Iraqis in the country of 43 million people already lives in areas suffering from water shortages.
Behind this “complex water crisis” in the Middle East, a multitude of factors reveal the hand of man: outdated agricultural irrigation methods, rapid population growth, but also “obstacles in water management”. “Water and regional cooperation”, particularly with regard to the management of dams and river flows between upstream and downstream countries.
As for these long-term droughts, experts say they are no longer “rare events”: such episodes “could recur at least every ten years in Syria and Iraq, and even twice every ten years in Iran.”
A frequency that could even double, scientists warn, “if global warming reaches two degrees above pre-industrial levels, as will happen in the coming decades if fossil fuels are not quickly phased out.”