KARBALA, Iraq – Mr Haydar Mohamed once grew wheat and barley, but Iraq’s relentless drought has forced him off the land and into the city where he now works in construction and drives a taxi.
“The transition is difficult,” said Mr Mohamed, 42, who abandoned village life several years ago for a shantytown in the central city of Karbala.
He is part of a growing wave of climate migrants in Iraq, a country that is on the frontlines of the global warming crisis.
Years of dire water scarcity left him no choice but to move, said the father of five.
“If you don’t work,” he said, “you don’t eat.”
Until 2017, Mr Mohamed, like his father before him, worked farmland in the remote village of Al-Khenejar in Iraq’s southern Diwaniya province.
In a good year, they would harvest 40 or 50 tonnes of grain, he said.
But “water shortages have impacted farmland and livestock”, said the man with a neat moustache and a traditional black robe worn over a white gown.
“In our region, there is no work,” he said. “I have children in school, which involves expenses. We needed a livelihood.”
He now earns about US$15 (S$20) a day on construction sites in the holy Shiite city, which thrives thanks to a steady flow of religious pilgrims.
To supplement his income, he works shifts as a taxi driver.
Near his home, cows graze on rubbish strewn across the dusty ground and grey cinderblock buildings line the bumpy alleys, connected for free by the municipality to power lines and water pipes.