Extreme heat, drought and displacement in Iraq

Iraq’s climate is changing faster than people can adapt. With each passing summer, new records are logged: record high temperatures, record low water levels. The heat is particularly extreme between May and October, with average daily temperatures ranging between 35℃ and 51℃ across the country.

All this is happening in a country rebuilding from 20 years of conflict, with 45 million people looking to find a way to move forward with their lives. While all in Iraq are affected, some face the summer with much less support than others. An estimated 1.1 million Iraqis are still displaced, in addition to the almost 300,000 Syrian refugees hosted in the Kurdistan region. While some internally displaced people live in homes, most live in makeshift shelters, often in airless tents at the mercy of the extreme weather. Across the country, year after year, the heat compounds their suffering, threatens to undo painstaking gains in livelihoods and food security, and precipitates risks of secondary displacement.

Starting in 2021, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) has issued a yearly report based on survey data on the impact of drought in Iraq across four broad themes: water security and governance, income and food insecurity, social tension, and drought and displacement. In 2023, this analysis indicated deepening economic vulnerability, increasing community tension, and clearer linkages between climate, conflict and displacement in the Ninewa Plains, an area of northern Iraq that witnessed large-scale conflict and displacement during the war against the so-called Islamic State.

Water security, climate change and livelihoods

In early June, as temperatures spiked across Iraq, dead fish floated to the surface of the Euphrates in the south. Videos from Baghdad showed people walking across ankle-high waters of the Tigris. By August, the Ministry of Water Resources reported that water reserves were at the ‘lowest levels’ in Iraq’s history. As early as 2014, the ministry was seeking $184 billion in funding to rehabilitate crumbling water infrastructure and, as of the end of 2023, those plans have largely remained unfunded. The strategy projects a shortfall of 10.94 billion cubic metres between the demand and supply of freshwater, and estimates an almost 25% loss in freshwater availability over the next 15 years across Iraq.

The transboundary nature of Iraq’s water resources means the country is largely reliant on cooperation from upstream riparian governments, namely Türkiye and Iran, for regular flows from the Tigris and Euphrates. While the lack of regional water-sharing agreements continues to be a cause for concern, the governance of water resources within Iraq not only undermines these negotiations, but also poses additional challenges.

Much of Iraq’s dam system was built to manage flooding, ‘when Iraqi rivers had too much water, not when they have too little’. Additionally, limited regulations on distribution, consumption and pollution have contributed to rising inequality between Iraqis with access to water upstream and those with increased scarcity downstream. Lack of investment coupled with outdated agricultural practices mean Iraq’s farming communities are increasingly impacted. Around 20% of Iraq’s workforce can be found in the agriculture sector, responsible for 5% of the country’s gross domestic product (GPD) – second only to the oil sector.

While the 2023 harvest was comparatively better than in recent years, largely due to higher rainfall in the central and southern parts of the country, it did not necessarily translate into greater economic and food security for all farmers across Iraq. Reported income in farming communities increased from 46% in 2022 to 54% in 2023, but women’s income security declined: 15% of women reported not earning incomes in 2023 compared to 6% in 2022. Part of the reason might be because women-led farming households have struggled to recover from last year’s drought, with NRC aware of households who have been forced to give up farming altogether.

The growth rate has also slowed. On average, household income increased for the third consecutive year, from an average of Iraqi dinar (IQD) 250,000 per month in 2021 to IQD 320,000 in 2023. However, the rate of income increase has dipped from 20% between 2021 and 2022 to only 6.67% between 2022 and 2023. Slower growth can be attributed to multiple stressors, chief among them drought in the second half of 2023 and steep devaluation of the Iraqi dinar against the United States dollar. Combined, reduced purchasing power meant that 4 in 5 respondents in farming communities in northern governorates still reported reducing food expenditure over the past 12 months.

There continue to be systemic barriers to equitable access to water in Iraq. By and large, irrigation accounts for the largest source of water for crop farming in Iraq. In Kirkuk and Salahaddin governorates in central Iraq, for example, approximately two-thirds of all farmers reported relying primarily on irrigation. However, irrigation practices in Iraq use dwindling water resources extremely inefficiently. Almost 70% of farmers surveyed reported using flood irrigation, which is widely considered the most water-intensive of all irrigation methods.

In areas without irrigation networks, such as Sinjar and Ba’aj in Ninewa governorate, farmers rely predominantly on rainfall or dig boreholes to access groundwater. In these locations, 1 in 3 surveyed respondents used boreholes, the drilling costs of which range between $25,000 and $40,000 and cut into estimated profits. Additionally, Iraq does not have accurate estimates of groundwater levels, and experts have repeatedly warned of the long-term impact of exhausting reserves which are not being replenished.

Punitive measures also often compound problems, with the government of Iraq increasingly controlling water flow to regulate use. In Salahaddin for instance, the Directorate of Water Resources closed certain canals throughout the summer of 2023, making it impossible for farmers downstream to continue crop production. As one farmer surveyed said, even when the canals are open, little to no water reaches his fields in Anbar.

Although the government has taken steps to incentivise efficient irrigation practices, subsidies are often only available to farmers who can afford the initial investment, or who are currently registered and connected to a network. This means poorer farmers without subsidised support are forced to continue to practise flood irrigation methods.

While the importance of water governance is acknowledged by authorities, Iraq’s static legislative structure increasingly hinders the country’s ability to adapt policies in a timely manner. Laws often cannot be changed in time due to bureaucratic impediments, and there is limited political will, which is required to push changes through parliament . On the ground, the result of this stagnation means many new farmers are not formally incorporated into national irrigation networks and those already registered are unable to renew certification.

Drought and displacement

Since the end of large-scale conflict in 2017, more than 4.8 million Iraqis have returned home, predominantly to five governorates: Ninewa, Kirkuk, Anbar, Diyala and Salahaddin. In many cases, people initially returned to war-torn villages and towns lacking basic services and infrastructure, to communities and neighbourhoods scarred by division and loss.

Over the intervening years, significant collaboration by Iraqi authorities and international agencies has resulted in the rehabilitation of vital infrastructure, ensuring some access to services. In conflict-affected Mosul, the rehabilitation by the United Nations and others of destroyed infrastructure has breathed new life into the city. In Kirkuk, rehabilitation of irrigation canals and grain silos by the NRC has contributed to increased yield across vast hectares of farmland. However, increasingly, climate change is limiting the rate and impact of this progress, and threatening to deepen inequities by limiting livelihoods opportunities, diminishing the natural resource base, and reducing water availability. These factors in turn contribute to rising community tensions.

From 2021 to 2023, while the locations surveyed by NRC have remained unchanged, the lived realities of the communities in these governorates have shifted. In 2022, just under 50% of respondents were still displaced; in 2023, almost 94% of individuals surveyed reported having recently returned. Motivations for return in Iraq are mixed and follow global trends. Many displaced individuals have returned spontaneously, independent of support from governmental or other actors, often for private reasons. Some have returned because conditions have improved, or, conversely, because conditions in places of displacement have deteriorated – economically, socially, politically or environmentally.

Between 2021 and 2023, NRC data indicates social tensions due to climate have ebbed and flowed in strong correlation to yearly rainfall. In 2022, almost 40% of respondents indicated an increase in community tension; in 2023, that number dropped to just 4% across surveyed governorates. Accordingly, this correlates strongly with rainfall performance recorded across the country between 2022 and 2023, whereby 2022 experienced lower rainfall than average compared to 2023, with significant variation across the country.

Interestingly, the highest levels of community tensions were reported in the Ninewa Plains, with 1 in 5 respondents in Ba’aj linking social cohesion to drought. While southern governorates have witnessed the most extreme impacts of climate change, the Ninewa Plains show signs of an emergent hotspot. With large-scale displacement and return in an underserved region, lacking infrastructure and surface water, Ninewa remains both socially and politically vulnerable to intercommunal conflict.

As of October 2023, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates upwards of 130,000 Iraqis in the south have been displaced due to climate change, jumping from approximately 80,000 as of August 2023. Interestingly, three-quarters of all climate-induced displacements recorded by IOM have occurred within urban areas predominantly in the south of the country. NRC data validates these findings and indicates a clear upward trend: between 2021 and 2023, the percentage of respondents reportedly displaced due to drought have increased from 2% to 5% nationwide. Similar to reported levels of social tensions, levels of climate-induced displacement were highest in the Ninewa Plains, with 24% of respondents in Ba’aj thinking of moving because of drought.

Conclusion

Despite the scale and speed of climate change across the country, and the impact it is already having on millions, international attention and support have been slow to mobilise. Humanitarian donors have largely deprioritised Iraq as the humanitarian response to the conflict with the Islamic State transitions into development-oriented approaches. On the other hand, development donors have been slow to step forward, often citing Iraq’s oil revenue as proof of the country’s capacity to solve its own problems. Combined, this gap in support has meant that communities recovering from conflict and displacement are now at risk of being displaced by impacts of climate change, as systems stretched by years of conflict approach breaking point. Mitigation measures are needed, and fast. Food systems, water sharing and climate security in the region are inextricably interlinked, and the impact of fluctuating temperature is being felt across a diverse and complex geography.

First, the government of Iraq needs to strengthen operational ability and capacity to monitor, regulate and allocate the country’s water resources. For data-driven solutions, Iraq must step up monitoring of weather patterns and water resources, enhance anticipatory warning systems, and drive forward policies like those found in the Green Paper to improve water governance. Ultimately, stabilising water security in Iraq will need a triaging of water-sector needs, an improvement in data and information, and the restoration of key built and natural water infrastructure.

Second, continued investment by donors and international financial institutions is required to upgrade old, inefficient infrastructure, alongside initiatives that support ‘climate-smart’ adaptations and farming practices. Additionally, support to system-strengthening needs to account for specific vulnerabilities of communities affected and displaced by conflict.

Lastly, there is a need for displacement-focused agencies to work alongside Iraqi authorities to develop national and governorate-level policies on disaster displacement. The NRC is currently working with stakeholders in Ninewa governorate to develop locally owned strategies to cope with climate change, which might serve as a replicable model.

Imrul Islam is the Advocacy Manager for the Norwegian Refugee Council in Iraq.

Thomas Wilson is the Water and Climate Specialist for the Norwegian Refugee Council in Iraq.

This article draws on the authors’ recently published report, Inadequate and inequitable: water scarcity and displacement in Iraq.