Marshland activists organized a campaign to save the Iraqi marshes known as Ahwar from the danger of drought.
The
campaign aims to support the Iraqi marshes and save them from drought, putting pressure at all levels to provide a water share for the Ahwar marshes, said Jassem
al-Asadi, the office director of Nature Iraq, a non-governmental
organization accredited to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).
The
campaign for the marshes, which have been listed as a UNESCO heritage site since 2016, will be similar to the campaign for Baghdad adopted
by artist Nasir Shamma to rehabilitate some areas of the capital, he added.
Asadi
revealed that the campaign will take place at all levels, including local, regional
and international levels, saying that a number of activists adopting the
campaign recently participated in the Paris conference to support the marshes
of Iraq.
The marshlands comprise five districts of Dhi Qar province, which are divided into
10 administrative units. The
area of the Nahariya marshes had dried in the early 1990s, but then about 50 percent of the area flooded in 2003, but this submerged
area has shrunk dramatically since the water crisis.
The
Iraqi marshes are a wetland area located in southern Iraq. Portions
of the marshes began to be drained in the 1950s to
reclaim land for agricultural use and oil exploration, and this lasted for about two decades.
In
the late 1980s and 1990s, this work was expanded. After the fall of Saddam
Hussein's regime in 2003, the marshes have partially recovered, but drought has
hindered the process.
