As part of a broader research collaboration between the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) and the Institute of Regional and International Studies (IRIS) at the American University of Iraq Sulaimani (AUIS), researchers from both organizations joined in releasing a new article “Climate Adaption Key to Iraq’s Stability and Economic Development” on November 29, 2023. The article was authored by Sarhang Hamasaeed, Director of Middle East Programs at USIP, Mac Skelton, Executive Director at IRIS, and Zmkan Saleem, Senior Research Fellow at IRIS.
The article highlights the severity of Iraq’s water scarcity problem and its direct impacts on agriculture, resulting in displacement, instability, and deterioration of social cohesion. Moreover, it attributed these catastrophic results to the role water scarcity plays in exacerbating longstanding political vulnerabilities and undermining Iraq’s ambitious efforts for development. It identifies the sources for water scarcity being disagreement between riparian states, inefficiencies in coordination and planning on the national level, and unsustainable solutions on the local level.
The authors call for the development of holistic and system-wide approaches to climate change and water scarcity in Iraq:
Unlike other challenges, where Iraq works through a degree of compartmentalization of issues and makes progress at the local level, preventing the worst outcomes in Iraq’s water crisis will require a more holistic strategy that would span the full upstream-to-downstream spectrum.
To read more, please see the full article on the USIP page. Please stay tuned for more updates on this project in the coming months.