From the north to the south of Iraq, ecological awareness is gradually awakening in the face of environmental damage that has become difficult to ignore. But activists still feel very alone in their struggle to convince a population of more than 40 million to change their habits and the authorities to act. The priority of their battles: saving water resources, in a country where reserves are beginning to run out.
From our correspondents in Baghdad and Erbil,
He ventures into the most polluted places in Iraqi Kurdistan with only a neck gaiter over his nose to endure the nauseating odors. Nabil Musa is a climate activist. It is one of the few in the region. For fifteen years, with a handful of other “ Waterkeeper ”, understand “ water guardians », he sets out to try to save the environment of the Iraqi Kurdish mountains. These same mountains which have seen wars follow each other for decades. With the fight against the Islamic State caliphate as the freshest memory, the priorities of the Kurdish authorities have so far not been geared towards environmental protection. So Nabil Musa acts as best he can.
He set up his own NGO to organize awareness programs among young Kurds. But he himself admits his powerlessness: “ J‘feel like a hummingbird fighting a forest fire by bringing drops of‘water “, he admits. Because the forest is indeed on fire. Slemani, the second Iraqi Kurdish city with two million inhabitants, discharges its waste directly into the Tanjaro. Black water then drunk by 850,000 inhabitants downstream. Result: repeated cholera epidemics, sick livestock and contaminated crops while the Kurdish region is the “breadbasket of Iraq”. To counter this, few activists. So, you have to convince.
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The first beginnings of‘climate activism in Iraqi Kurdistan
Darbandikhan is a town of 45,000 inhabitants victims of Slemani wastewater. Last February, a unique demonstration in the region was held in this small town. For 32 days, environmental activists held a sit-in to demand that the government clean up the water. An organizer of the demonstration who wishes to remain anonymous says: “ There were two facets to this mobilization: d‘On the one hand, it was a show of force, with slogans to remind the authorities of their responsibilities. Of the‘other, it was an awareness operation,‘explanation to residents. In total, 7,000 Iraqis came to see us, many of them students. » According to this activist, it is not complicated to mobilize on these issues: “ L‘effect is immediatees qu‘we’re talking about that, as the population is directly affected by these problemsemy related to‘environment. » For Nabil Musa, this first mobilization is synonymous with hope: “ Obviously, it’s not going fast enough, but lots of seeds have been plantey! And we are waiting for the surrounding circumstances to be favorable so that these seeds can grow and the environmental movement can take off.‘magnitude here. »
The Kurdish authorities, in reaction to this mobilization, promised to release funds to set up a purification system. But eight months later, residents have not seen any new infrastructure arrive. The organizers of the event announced their intention to carry out other actions throughout Iraqi Kurdistan.
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L‘lack of national reaction
On the side of federal Iraq, the situation is no better. We no longer count the sources of contamination of rivers. Near Kirkuk, the black water of wadi el-Naft, literally the valley of oil, is a sad illustration of this. Polluted by waste from the public oil company, in places, a thick black and oily layer, mixed with plastic corpses, completely covers the watercourse. Despite the financial sanctions imposed on polluters by the environmental police, the entire valley has been contaminated for decades. “ Each village in this valley, using this water, has multiple cases of cancer, denounces a former municipal councilor of the commune of Qwaz Arab, Wissam Khamees. We reported them to the authorities, but no one‘replied. »
This feeling of abandonment is shared downstream of the Tigris, in Baghdad, where wastewater arriving from Kurdistan joins that of the capital. Whether it is because many neighborhoods have developed without being connected to a sewer network, or because the treatment plants are saturated, because they have not been adapted to the tripling of the population in 40 years, it It’s a disaster. Residents are still waiting for the projects promised by several NGOs.
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Citizen initiatives against the feeling of inevitability
Helpless in the face of the lack of infrastructure, some decided to tackle a problem, no less pressing, but more accessible. Murthada el-Tameemi launched the movement Clean Iraq, a little without intention, one evening when he wanted to admire the sunset over the Tigris. “ All I saw was trash and sewage being washed into the river.time. JI was so shocked that I said to myself, by the time‘a second, that people should not know the extent of the situation, he remembers. How can we see this without doing anything? ? »
He then posts a video on social networks, where he is widely followed, to encourage people to collect the plastic covering the banks of the river. He does not imagine for a moment that he has just launched a movement. Seduced by the idea, tens and then thousands of volunteers joined him. In one year, around fifty cleaning campaigns were organized. “ There are still too few people who take this problememe seriously. Even with all our participants, it‘is a drop of‘water in a problem desertemy, regrets the young engineer, now living between Iraq, where he supervises the project, and Canada, where he has lived since the age of 15. We’re trying to change decades of conditioning. » It is not uncommon in Baghdad to see someone seated on the banks of the Tigris throw their empty water bottle over the railing into the river.
“ L‘one of the problemsemy majors that we met, it‘is the feeling of failure that‘have some of our volunteers when‘they spend hours cleaning, then come back and have to do it again “, he laments. The next step will therefore be to develop actions in schools and universities to raise awareness of individual actions that could help save Iraqi waterways.
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The urgency is there. The United Nations estimates that by 2025, accessible water reserves will have decreased by 20% in Iraq. The drop in river levels, at the same time, will increase the concentration of pollutants previously diluted in the water. This will create an increased health risk, for the city of Basra, in particular, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers meet, carrying with them waste and pollutants from all over Iraq.