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A multi-million dollar project to restore the environment
and provide clean drinking water in the Marshlands of Mesopotamia
was announced today by the United Nations Environment Programme
(UNEP).
The project, funded by the Government of Japan, will support
the sustainable development and restoration of the Iraqi Marshlands
through implementation of environmentally sounds technologies.
Drinking water and sanitation systems will be installed in
key communities and pilot wetlands restoration undertaken
for the benefit of people and wildlife.
The Marshlands, considered by some to be the location of
the Biblical Garden of Eden, were massively damaged in the
late 20th Century, partly as a result of new dams on the Tigris
and Eurphrates river systems and partly as a result of massive
drainage operations by the previous Iraqi regime.
In 2001, UNEP alerted the world to their plight when it released
satellite images showing that 90 per cent of these fabled
wetlands, home to rare and unique species like the Sacred
Ibis and African darter, and a spawning ground for Gulf fisheries,
had been lost.
Further studies, released in 2003, showed that an additional
three per cent or 325 square kilometres had gone. Experts
feared that the entire wetlands, home to a 5,000 year-old
civilization who are the heirs of the Babylonians and Sumerians,
could disappear entirely by 2008.
With the collapse of the former Iraqi regime in mid-2003,
local residents began opening floodgates and breaching embankments
in order to bring water back into the marshlands.
Satellite images indicate that, by April this year, around
a fifth or some 3,000 square kilometres of the marshes had
been re-flooded.
The challenge now is to restore the environment and provide
clean water and sanitation services to the up to 85,000 people
living there.
A recent United Nations inter-agency assessment and public
health survey found that most of the Marsh Arabs are collecting
water directly from the marshlands.
Many of the settlements in the area lack basic sanitation
services with waste water draining into the street or nearest
stream. As a result, water-borne diseases have become commonplace.
The $11 million project, approved in the framework of the
UN Iraq Trust Fund, will initially target around a dozen settlements
with small-scale water treatment systems some of which are
likely to be solar powered.
Reed beds and other marshland habitats which act as natural,
water-filtration systems, will be restored which will benefit
not only local residents but also provide new habitats for
birds and other key wildlife.
Other activities will include the setting up of a Marshland
Information Network, an Internet-based system that will allow
those with an interest in the region to share their ideas
and strategies.
Satellite images, documenting how restoration work is faring
and chronicling changes in vegetation and the progress of
re-flooding, will be posted on the site almost daily.
Some of the funds will support public awareness schemes,
both locally and internationally.
The project will also help train the Iraqi authorities, both
at national government and local levels. It will train experts
in wetland management and restoration, remote sensing analysis
and community-based resource management.
Several other governments and non-governmental organizations
are involved in the Iraqi Marshlands. The UNEP project aims
to strengthen the coordination of these various efforts to
ensure maximum benefit for the people and wildlife there.
It is envisaged that this coordinated approach will be applied
to the future development of a wider Marshlands strategy in
the region.
Klaus Toepfer, UNEP’s Executive Director, said: “
The Marshlands of Mesopotamia constitute the largest wetland
ecosystem in the Middle East and Western Eurasia. They are
also culturally significant. UNEP has taken a keen interest
in their fate, documenting their destruction and alerting
the world to their demise”.
“I am therefore delighted that the Japanese government
has stepped in to support a new beginning for the Marshlands
and the Marsh Arabs. Half the world’s wetlands have been
lost in the past 100 years. I am sure that the lessons learnt
during this project will provide important clues on how to
resuscitate other lost and degraded wetlands elsewhere on
the globe,” he said.
Monique Barbut, Director of UNEP’s Division of Technology,
Industry and Economics which will be carrying out the project,
said:” We will be putting together, in close cooperation
with the relevant Iraqi ministries, a ten-person team of local
and international experts. The project starts today and we
hope to begin field studies and pilot water treatment projects
towards the end of the year”.
“Nobody fully knows how much of the Marshlands can be
recovered,” she said. “The future of the Iraqi Marshlands
will be tied to the eventual development of a master plan
covering regional cooperation with those countries upstream
and downstream in the Tigris-Euphrates river basin,”
she said.
The UNEP project, Support for Environmental Management of
the Iraqi Marshlands, will be implemented by DTIE's office
in Japan, The International Environmental Technology Centre.
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