A climate warning from the cradle of civilisation

For much of its history, the area known as Mesopotamia was a lush agricultural region. Now a water crisis is sparking clashes and villages are turning to dust.

- Alissa J. Rubin

ALBU JUMAA, Iraq - Every schoolchild learns the name: Mesopotamia - the Fertile Crescent, the cradle of civilisation.

Today, much of that land is turning to dust.

The word itself, Mesopotamia, means the land between rivers. It is where the wheel was invented, irrigation flourished and the earliest known system of writing emerged. The rivers here, some scholars say, fed the fabled hanging gardens of Babylon and converged at the place described in the Bible as the Garden of Eden.

Now, so little water remains in some villages near the Euphrates River that families are dismantling their homes, brick by brick, piling them into pickup trucks and driving away.

"You would not believe it if I say it now, but this was a watery place," said Sheikh Adnan al Sahlani, a science teacher here in southern Iraq near Naseriyah, a few miles from the Old Testament city of Ur, which the Bible describes as the home town of Prophet Abraham.

These days, "nowhere has water", he said. Everyone who is left is "suffering a slow death".

You don't have to go back to biblical times to find a more verdant Iraq. Well into the 20th century, the southern city of Basra was known as the Venice of the East for its canals, plied by gondola-like boats that threaded through residential neighbourhoods.

Indeed, for much of its history, the Fertile Crescent - often defined as including swathes of modern-day Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Iran, the West Bank and Gaza - did not lack for water, inspiring centuries of artists and writers who depicted the region as a lush ancient land. Spring floods were common, and rice, one of the most water-intensive crops in the world, was grown for more than 2,000 years.

But now, nearly 40 per cent of Iraq has been overtaken by blowing desert sands that claim tens of thousands of acres of arable land every year.

GROWING POPULATION, DWINDLING WATER SUPPLIES