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SAWA LAKE, Iraq: A “No Fishing” signal on the sting of Iraq’s western desert is without doubt one of the few clues that this was as soon as Sawa Lake, a biodiverse wetland and leisure landmark.
Human exercise and local weather change have mixed to show the positioning right into a barren wasteland with piles of salt.
Deserted accommodations and vacationer services right here hark again to the Nineteen Nineties when the salt lake, circled by sandy banks, was in its heyday and in style with newlyweds and households who got here to swim and picnic.
However immediately, the lake close to the town of Samawa, south of the capital Baghdad, is totally dry.
Bottles litter its former banks and plastic baggage dangle from sun-scorched shrubs, whereas two pontoons have been lowered to rust.
“This yr, for the primary time, the lake has disappeared,” environmental activist Husam Subhi mentioned. “In earlier years, the water space had decreased in the course of the dry seasons.”
Immediately, on the sandy floor sprinkled with salt, solely a pond stays the place tiny fish swim, in a supply that connects the lake to an underground water desk.
The 5 sq. kilometre lake has been drying up since 2014, says Youssef Jabbar, environmental division head of Muthana province.
The causes have been “local weather change and rising temperatures,” he defined.
“Muthana is a desert province, it suffers from drought and lack of rainfall.”
1,000 ILLEGAL WELLS
A authorities assertion issued final week additionally pointed to “greater than 1,000 wells illegally dug” for agriculture within the space.
Moreover, close by cement and salt factories have “drained vital quantities of water from the groundwater that feeds the lake”, Jabbar mentioned.
It could take nothing in need of a miracle to deliver Sawa Lake again to life.
Use of aquifers must be curbed and, following three years of drought, the world would now want a number of seasons of considerable rainfall, in a rustic hit by desertification and thought to be one of many 5 most weak to local weather change.
The Ramsar Conference on Wetlands, a world treaty, recognised Sawa as “distinctive… as a result of it’s a closed water physique in an space of sabkha (salt flat) with no inlet or outlet”.
“The lake is fashioned over limestone rock and is remoted by gypsum obstacles surrounding the lake; its water chemistry is exclusive,” says the conference’s web site.
A stopover for migratory birds, the lake was as soon as “house to a number of globally weak species” such because the jap imperial eagle, houbara bustard and marbled duck.
“LAKE DIED BEFORE ME”
Sawa is just not the one physique of water in Iraq going through the perils of drought.
Iraqi social media is usually full of pictures of grotesquely cracked soil, reminiscent of within the UNESCO-listed Howeiza marshes within the south, or Razzaza Lake within the central province of Karbala.
In Sawa, a pointy drop in rainfall – now solely 30 per cent of what was regular for the area – has lowered the underground water desk, itself drained by wells, mentioned Aoun Dhiab, a senior advisor at Iraq’s water assets ministry.
And rising temperatures have elevated evaporation.
Dhiab mentioned authorities have banned the digging of recent wells and are working to shut illegally-dug wells throughout the nation.
Latif Dibes, who divides his time between his hometown of Samawa and his adopted nation of Sweden, has labored for the previous decade to boost environmental consciousness.
The previous driving faculty teacher cleans up the banks of the Euphrates River and has turned the huge, lush backyard of his house right into a public park.
He remembers the varsity journeys and holidays of his childhood, when the household would go swimming at Sawa.
“If the authorities had taken an curiosity, the lake wouldn’t have disappeared at this price. It is unbelievable,” he mentioned.
“I’m 60 years previous and I grew up with the lake. I believed I’d disappear earlier than it, however sadly, it has died earlier than me.”
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