Climate change: sandstorms and salinisation threaten Iraq's archaeological heritage
Iraq is a “country facing the most and acting the least,” says one expert. Over the next decade, up to 90 per cent of archaeological sites in southern Iraq are at risk from dry winters and hotter summers. Salt left from enhanced evaporation creates a crust that devours everything. Increasingly, farmers and herders are moving to the cities.
Baghdad (AsiaNews) – Iraq’s ancient archaeological sites are threatened by climate change, including increasingly intense sandstorms and salinisation, this in a “country facing the most and acting the least,” says Iraqi archaeologist Aqeel Mansarawi.
Over the next decade, he warns sand could cover “80 to 90 per cent of the archaeological sites”. One of them is Umm al-Aqarib, an important Sumerian town in southern Mesopotamia that dates back more than four thousand years, and covers an area of five square kilometres.
The city reached its peak in 2350 BC but now the site is threatened and could disappear. Not only has it suffered from the looting of antiquities in the past because of poor monitoring, but now climate change could bury it under sand.
More than 10 sandstorms have hit the country last year, with visible effects at the site. Before excavating can start, now “Archaeological missions will have to put more effort,” Mansarawi explained.
Extending across what was once called in antiquity the Fertile Crescent, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates, Iraq is rich in resources, but now symbolises the environmental crisis that is facing the planet.
Sandstorms, rising temperatures and declining water resources, are having an impact not only on human health but also on the country’s cultural heritage.
This worries the local Church. Card Louis Raphael Sako, patriarch of the Chaldean Church, had already raised the issue when he was archbishop of Kirkuk. For the cardinal, Iraq’s cultural heritage is a "universal" good that is worth "more than oil".
Speaking in 2016 at the "International Conference for the Safeguarding of Cultural Heritage in Conflict Areas" in Dubai (UAE), he said that protecting such heritage was everyone’s responsibility. On that occasion, heads of state and government, scholars, Islamic and Christian religious leaders, historians, archaeologists and cultural activists came together to discuss ways to preserve the cultural legacy of the past.
For now, the winds are "more loaded with dust" and "carry fragments of the soil, especially sand and silt, which produce erosion and the crumbling of ancient buildings," lamented Jaafar al-Jotheri, professor of archaeology at Iraq's Al-Qadisiyah University.
The cause, ins view, is drier winters and longer, hotter summers with temperature that exceed 50 degrees and "weaken the soil[s] and fragment them because of the lack of vegetation".
Mark Altaweel, professor of Near Eastern archaeology at University College London, blames another factor, salinisation, due to the “very dry" environment. When “water evaporates very quickly, only the salt residues remain”, which form a crust that devours everything.
Iraq is one of the five countries most affected by the main factors climate change, the first of which are long periods of drought, according to UN reports.
Although the emergency is largely due to the lack of rain, Iraqi authorities are especially critical of Turkey and Iran for building dams upriver, which they view as the main factor in limiting the flow of water.
Still, Jotheri notes that Iraq has the "worst hydraulic management”. Even today, farmers resort to flood irrigation, a technique widely considered a huge waste.
What is more, with water shortages gradually driving farmers and herders to cities, land is abandoned, and “the soil becomes even more vulnerable to winds,” Jotheri adds.
Already in 2021, then Iraqi President Barham Salih raised the alarm, noting that “desertification affects 39 per cent of Iraqi land,” a percentage expected to increase.
