PARIS - Meeting world targets to limit climate change would avert hundreds of thousands of heat-related deaths in the Middle East and North Africa, scientists said on Tuesday, urging the region to adapt better.
The World Heritage site in southern Iraq survived Saddam Hussein’s campaign to drain the wetlands. Now they’re drying up, and biodiversity is collapsing.
After recovering from Saddam Hussein’s efforts to drain them, southern Iraq’s Mesopotamian Marshes are disappearing as a regional drought enters its fourth year and dams cut off water flows. Marsh Arabs, resident for millennia, are leaving, and biodiversity is collapsing.
The reputed home of the biblical Garden of Eden, Iraq's swamplands have been battered by three years of drought and low rainfall, as well as reduced water flows along rivers and tributaries originating in neighbouring Turkiye and Iran.