The “extreme drought” affecting Iraq, Syria and Iran would not have occurred without global warming caused “mainly” by the burning of oil, gas and coal, according to an expert report released on Wednesday.
High temperatures, driven by climate change, have made “drought much more likely — about 25 times more likely in Syria and Iraq and 16 times more likely in Iran,” notes the World Weather Attribution (WWA) study.
The document highlights “years of conflict and political instability” having 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.
“The drought would not have occurred without climate change, mainly caused by the combustion of oil, gas and coal,” assert experts from WWA, a network specializing in this type of analysis.
The study concerns a period from July 2020 to June 2023, in two areas where the drought was particularly significant: Iran, and the Tigris and Euphrates basin, the mythical rivers which have their source in Turkey and crisscross Syria and Iraq.
“These two regions are currently experiencing an “extreme drought”, according to the American monitoring scale,” underlines the press release accompanying the publication of the report.
According to the study, “human-induced climate change has increased the intensity of such drought to such an extent that in a world 1.2°C colder” — the climate before the industrial era —, “it would not have been considered as such”.
“After fairly good rains in 2020 and good harvests, [il y a eu] three years of low rainfall followed by very high temperatures, leading to a drought with acute repercussions on access to drinking water in agriculture”, summarizes Friederike Otto, climatologist at the Grantham Institute of Imperial College London .
“Not very optimistic”
During an online conference, climate scientist Mohammad Rahimi of Iran’s Semnan University (north) called for better resource management.
“In our region, we have never had a lot of rain, that’s normal. What is new is the rise in temperatures,” underlines the expert who participated in the study.
“We will lose much of our precipitation to evaporation, and if temperatures rise further in the coming years, we can anticipate more evaporation and plant transpiration,” he predicts. “I’m not very optimistic about the future.”
In Iraq, one of the main oil producers in the world, or in war-ravaged Syria, AFP journalists regularly note the repercussions of climate change and this drought hitting the most disadvantaged populations.
Both countries have experienced a drastic fall in agricultural production in recent years, particularly in regions rich in wheat. Just as the drop in river flow and water pollution have impacted fishing.
“Water crisis”
Until September 2022, the drought in Syria had led to the displacement of around two million people living in rural areas, recalls WWA. In Iran, water shortages are causing “tensions” with neighboring countries, just as poor harvests have caused food inflation to explode.
In Iraq, tensions linked to water distribution are on the rise. In the country of 43 million inhabitants, nearly one in five Iraqis already lives in areas suffering from water shortages, according to a UN report.
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 concerning the administration of dams and river flow between upstream and downstream countries.
As for these long-term droughts, they no longer constitute “rare events”, according to experts: such episodes “could recur at least once every ten years in Syria and Iraq, or even twice every ten years in Iran.
A frequency which risks even doubling, scientists warn, “if global warming reaches 2°C more than pre-industrial levels, as will be the case in the decades to come, if fossil fuels are not quickly eliminated “.