"Climate Change Is Killing Off a 5,000-Year-Old Iraqi Culture"

The marsh Arabs who live at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers have a culture and economy that has survived for millenia. Now climate change is drying up the water they depend on, and expecially affecting the roles of women.

"As our species finds itself staring down the barrel at widespread environmental collapse due to climate change, some of us have more to worry about than others. In particular, the Middle East and surrounding regions have been shown to be particularly vulnerable to climate change effects, especially those having to do with water: Within the last seven years the region has lost enough water to fill the Dead Sea and by 2040, 14 of the 33 most water stressed countries on Earth will be in the Middle East. Although Middle Eastern countries will be some of the hardest hit by climate change, there is a marginalized community within their borders which will be affected by climate change still more than others: Women.

There has been extensive research conducted which examines the intersection of gender and climate change, and the bulk of this research has found that women are being disproportionately affected by climate change, particularly in those countries where they have fewer rights. These observations were most recently bolstered in a new study led by Nadia Al-Mudaffar Fawzi, a marine ecologist at Iraq’s University of Basrah, who found that a 5,000 year old Iraqi culture was disappearing as a direct result of climate change and that this culture’s women were bearing the brunt of this climate-induced fallout.

As detailed in the study published last week in Ecosystem Health and Sustainability, the ancient Arab Marsh (Ma’dan) culture, which has thrived in the Mesopotamian Marshes of Southern Iraq for thousands of years, is disappearing as the marshes are drying up. Located at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, these marshes are undergoing a process of desertification as a result of climate change, with the natural resources the Ma’dan people depend on—such as the reeds used to make their iconic mudhif houses—vanishing along with the water."

Daniel Oberhaus reports for Motherboard March 27, 2016.
 

Source: Motherboard, 03/30/2016