One-third of paradise

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
The marshes of southern Iraq

Feb 24th 2005 WASHINGTON, DC
From The Economist print edition

Can southern Iraq's marshes be restored? This, and other news from the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

ONE of the many tragedies of Saddam Hussein's rule was his ecological vandalism of the marshlands of Mesopotamia. The Iraqi marshlands once stretched across 20,000 square kilometres and were home to hundreds of thousands of marsh Arabs. For thousands of years they had been a lush and productive oasis, home to rare and diverse plants and animals. Some people claim they are the site of the garden of Eden. So the draining of the marshes between 1985 and 2000 was a catastrophe on many levels. When Saddam had finished, less than 10% of them remained.

The end of the war has brought much change. Water is now flowing again into many of the drained areas. But it may be too late to turn the clock back. At the AAAS meeting, held in Washington, DC, from February 17th to 21st, Curtis Richardson of Duke University in North Carolina said that only 30% of the original marshland had the potential for restoration.

Since the American invasion, there have been many uncontrolled releases of water by exuberant marsh dwellers who have blown up or removed dykes and floodgates. Azzam Alwash, director of the “Eden Again” project at the Iraq Foundation in Washington, DC, has calculated that 40% of the original marshes are now covered in water. In some areas, reed beds have sprouted like magic beanstalks, and birds and fish have started to return. It isn't magic, though. When water is added to a soil that is still rich with the seeds of the plants that once lived there, those seeds should sprout and grow. Nor, sadly, is there anything mystical about the fact that in other places where water has been added, the result has been nothing but a dead lake. There is, for example, a huge area south of the last remnant of remaining natural marsh on the Iran-Iraq border, Hawizeh, which has been flooded for six months but where nothing grows.

The problem is that in many areas the drainage left so much salt on the ground that nothing can live in the soil. In other places the dried reed beds caught fire and burnt with such heat that the ground has been baked into a hard ceramic crust. Nothing may grow there again. And even in areas where there is life, the amount of salt in the soil means that what does grow back may bear little resemblance to what was there before.

What though the field be lost?

That, of course, raises the question of exactly what was once there. Luckily, images taken by Landsat, an American satellite programme, in the 1970s, give some idea of where different types of vegetation existed. More help comes from Majeed al-Hilli, a scientist working at the University of Baghdad. At about the same time as Landsat was snapping away, he was working on a PhD on the marshes. His was the first and only systematic study of their vegetation. It is hoped that his research will tell those working on the restoration of the marshes about the size and nature of the plants that were once there, as well as the chemistry of the water and soils.
Although much has been made of the flourishing of greenery in some areas, this could be a false dawn. Dr Richardson warns that there will be little or no long-term restoration unless the wetlands are designed to allow enough water to flush through and reduce the tendency of salt and poisonous heavy metals to build up.

At the moment, water is being allowed to come in, but nobody is in any hurry to let it out again. Yet the seasonal flushing of fresh water and sediment is crucial to the survival of the marshes. In the al-Sanaf marsh, for example, there is particular concern about selenium. If the marsh is not flushed with fresh water, this metal will accumulate and have toxic effects on animals at the top of the food chain.

In the Middle East, water is a precious commodity. The need for the marshes to be flushed, and the fact that not all of the former wetlands have equal potential for restoration, mean that what little water is available must be aimed at those places where it will do the most good. Dr Alwash's work on hydraulic models of the marshes will help.

The models, combined with detailed topographic information, allow him to predict how much water is needed to reflood an area to the depths necessary for proper marshland. There is no point in reflooding if the result is a few centimetres of stagnant water. That water might be better used elsewhere. Dr Alwash's work will allow various options for restoration to be assessed, and also permit the creation of wetlands designed to meet the sewage-treatment requirements of local villagers.

Unfortunately, the key to successful restoration of the marshes lies beyond the realms of scientific research. Although marsh restoration is symbolic to Iraqis, there are a number of reasons why even 30% may remain unattainable. One of the most visible is the threat to Iraqi water flow posed by the massive Ataturk Dam—built in Turkey in 1990. Its reservoir has the capacity to hold five times the annual flow of the Euphrates (around 31 billion cubic metres per year). Most of the water in the Euphrates and Tigris begins its journey as snow in Turkey. It is this melting snow that should feed the marshes every spring.

To make matters worse, the flow of water to Hawizeh, the last remaining marsh, is threatened by a new dyke being built by Iran, apparently for the purpose of selling water to Kuwait. This marsh is a refuge for the plants and animals that it is hoped will return to restored areas of marshland.

Even if enough water is theoretically available, there are other problems. While most marsh Arabs seem to want the marshes restored, it looks as though many no longer actually wish to live in them. Peter Reiss, director of a marsh-restoration programme funded by the United States' Agency for International Development, says that only 1,600 people actually now live on the floating grass platforms that were traditional before Saddam began the drainage. In these places life is currently very difficult. The only water people have to drink is saline and polluted. Diarrhoea is commonplace and, according to Mr Reiss, infant mortality exceeds 50%.

The way found prosperous once

This is not to say that life would be like this in areas that had been properly restored. But that may be irrelevant, for the drainage of the marshes has brought about a social and economic transformation that is unlikely to be reversed in a big way. Today, marsh Arabs mostly live on drained areas or on the margins of marshlands, and they have taken to growing wheat and raising livestock. The marsh Arabs are now mostly field Arabs. Some of Dr Reiss's work involves improving agricultural methods, planting date palms and paying vets to look after livestock. And as the Iraqi economy improves, and agriculture and industry develop, there will be demand for water. That will leave some difficult choices ahead.

Marsh Arabs were once an integral part of the Mesopotamian marshes. If the human component of this ecological system does not wish to return, then it will not be possible to restore the marshlands to what they once were—however much significance that restoration may have to everyone else. This still leaves the possibility of restoring the animals and plants, but it means it is necessary for Iraqis to decide exactly for whom the marshes are being restored, and to what.

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