At daybreak, a veil of mist clings to the canals of Hawizeh, the place sky and water appear to blur right into a mirror. Within the stern of a slim wood boat, 23-year-old Mustafa Hashim scans the marshes’ shallows, chopping the motor and switching to a conventional pole to keep away from snagging on invasive roots or thickening mud.It takes him about half an hour to push via the shrinking marshes to achieve Um al-Nea’aj, as soon as a vibrant lake teeming with boats and birdsong. Now, the water is about half a metre deep.“Two years in the past, there have been households and fishermen in every single place,” Mustafa says, leaning out of the boat. “You can hear laughter, the splash of fish. As we speak, there’s nothing.”Mustafa Hashim, 23, steers his boat to Lake Um al-Nea’aj. With the altering local weather, drought and water extraction, navigation is changing into more and more troublesome. {Photograph}: Daniela SalaOn the horizon, flames from the Halfaya oilfield flicker.Iraq’s southern wetlands – identified collectively because the Mesopotamian marshes – are among the many world’s most endangered ecosystems. Their expanse is believed by some to have contained the biblical Backyard of Eden. Recognised as a Unesco world heritage web site in 2016 and guarded since 2007 as a wetland of worldwide significance beneath the Ramsar Conference, the marshes as soon as stretched almost 120 miles (200km) from Nasiriya to Basra, forming a wealthy and huge aquatic world.However beneath the floor lies one other type of wealth: oil. Three strategic oil concessions overlap with the protected space: Halfaya, Huwaiza, and Majnoon. The latter, Majnoon, takes its identify from the Arabic phrase for “loopy”: it’s thought-about one of many world’s “super-giant” oilfields, with estimated reserves of as much as 38bn barrels (5.2bn tonnes).Three generations at house in Abu Khussaf village: Hashim Kasid, Mustafa Hashim and Kasid Wanis. {Photograph}: Daniela SalaBut the processes used to extract that oil have a voracious urge for food for water. In a land already threatened by drought and desertification, the wetlands are being sucked dry.Mustafa’s grandfather, Kasid Wanis, 87, as soon as took his boat from Hawizeh to Basra (about 70 miles) utilizing nothing however a pole and his reminiscence of the route. “We didn’t know what automobiles have been. We didn’t want them. We have been a individuals of water,” he says.His 41-year-old son Hashim, Mustafa’s father, grew up fishing these waters. However 4 years in the past, he packed his nets away. “There’s not sufficient water to stay,” he says quietly.Crude oil is Iraq’s financial lifeline, accounting for greater than 95% of its whole exports and 69% of GDP. The nation is the world’s sixth-largest crude producer, and the destiny of the Hawizeh marshes is tightly sure to that of the oil business. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Europe has sought options to Moscow’s crude, with Iraq changing into a key supply.The connection between oil extraction and water shortage is direct and devastating. The Halfaya oilfield – by which the French power firm TotalEnergies additionally holds a stake – is operated by a consortium led by PetroChina.Spanning an space 3 times the scale of Paris, it consists of 300 wells, three oil-processing crops, a water-treatment facility, and its personal airport to move overseas staff between the positioning and worldwide airports. It’s state-owned PetroChina’s largest abroad challenge.Fishermen from Qarmat Ali with the Nahr Bin Umar oilfield throughout the Shatt al-Arab River. They complain that attributable to air pollution and the river’s elevated salinity, they usually pull in lifeless fish. {Photograph}: Daniela SalaAbout a decade in the past, shortly after PetroChina started operations within the area, six water-pumping stations have been constructed alongside the Tigris River – the lifeline that feeds the marshes.Day by day, they extract about 60,000 cubic metres of water, roughly the day by day consumption of a mid-sized metropolis. That water is diverted to the oilfields, the place it’s injected into wells to spice up crude extraction – a normal observe throughout the area.The pumping stations are drawing from already diminished reserves. Dams constructed upstream in Turkey and the Kurdish area of Iraq have decreased water stream into southern Iraq by greater than 50% because the Seventies, whereas Iranian dams on the Karkheh River – which feeds the Hawizeh marshes – have additionally decreased the area’s water provide. Now, feeding this industrial oil complicated is costing residents their setting and their lifestyle, they are saying.Nowadays, Hashim is much less fearful about dwindling fish shares than concerning the army checkpoints. The canals that after led deep into the wetlands are reduce off and patrolled. Armed guards management entry, requiring native fishers and buffalo herders handy over their ID playing cards to enter.The marshes have turn out to be a militarised zone. Authorities say the heightened police and army presence is supposed to forestall smuggling and safe the close by border with Iran just some miles away. However in accordance with residents, it additionally serves to suppress native protests.“The occupation follows the oil,” Mustafa says. “They need to reduce us off from our land to allow them to exploit it with out resistance.”A water buffalo’s carcass mendacity the place Basra’s northern marshes as soon as have been. They dried up after a water-pumping station was constructed to provide the oilfields of the Italian agency ENI. {Photograph}: D SalaAs the marshes dried, Mustafa did what many others have been compelled to do – he joined the business he blames for his or her destruction. In 2023, he and his father labored as subcontracted labourers for PetroChina. “I noticed it up shut,” he says. “They name this growth, but it surely’s destruction disguised as progress.”By the summer season, he had stop. That very same yr, drought peaked and protests erupted throughout the area, and Mustafa joined them, organising blockades of oilfield entry roads. “At first I advised Mustafa to cease,” Hashim says. “However then he made me see it: that is political, and we are able to’t keep silent.”In addition to its thirst for water, oil extraction within the area has been linked to devastating air pollution. “This economic system is actually killing individuals,” says Majid al-Saadi, director of the agriculture division in Maysan province. In late 2024, Saadi and his staff compiled a confidential native authorities report into the results of oil extraction on the area.The report, seen by the Guardian, paperwork alarming concentrations of hydrocarbons and heavy metals, chemical substances into ingesting water, and the collapse of native agriculture. “This isn’t simply air pollution – it’s expropriation,” Saadi says.Wastewater and polluted foam pour into Basra’s Ashaar canal, subsequent to the Shatt al-Arab River. Basra was as soon as generally known as the ‘Venice of the Center East’ however the canals are actually stuffed with sewage. {Photograph}: Daniela SalaIn early 2025, Saadi delivered the report back to Iraq’s setting ministry, and says that officers promised to open talks with the oil ministry. However he’s sceptical that any motion will comply with.For now, the growth of oilfields within the space continues. Leaked images and movies, geolocated by the Guardian, now present excavators, pipelines, and staff digging instantly into the guts of the protected zone – the place the brand new Huwaiza oilfield is now beneath growth.The exploration has been confirmed by satellite tv for pc imagery evaluation carried out for the Guardian by Placemarks, an unbiased geo‑evaluation studio that makes use of satellite tv for pc imagery and knowledge to map environmental adjustments.Fish bought in Nahr Bin Omar. They don’t seem to be from the close by Shatt al-Arab River, which has not equipped a sufficiently big catch to promote for years, however from the ocean or a fish farm. {Photograph}: Daniela SalaA contract signed in February 2023 between Iraq’s state-owned Maysan Oil Firm and China’s Geo-Jade Petroleum paved the way in which for the sector’s growth. The brand new excavations would instantly violate Ramsar protections. However the pact just isn’t legally binding, and is dependent upon states complying voluntarily.Iraq’s oil and setting ministries didn’t reply to requests for remark. In July, the inside ministry’s federal safety affairs company stated in a social media submit that environmental police had “performed a area inspection … to observe potential environmental violations ensuing from the actions of oil firms within the Hor al-Huwaiza space”.It continued: “The sphere go to revealed that the pond had utterly dried up, with no ongoing drilling, extraction, or disposal of oil waste on the web site. Nonetheless, there have been excavations … being carried out by native firms contracted with the Chinese language firm Geo-Jade for exploration functions and the long run set up of oil rigs.”The Basra water assets directorate. A neighborhood human rights physique has warned of a looming humanitarian catastrophe from water shortage, air pollution and rising toxicity. {Photograph}: Daniela SalaJassem Falahi, an setting ministry official, has beforehand advised AFP that the protected standing of the marshes didn’t bar growth initiatives.Nonetheless, he added in Might: “Funding is topic to particular circumstances and requirements that should not disturb the core space … or have an effect on the positioning and its biodiversity.” A spokesperson for TotalEnergies stated that whereas it had a 22.8% stake in Halfaya oilfield, it was not an operator, and that questions concerning the area ought to be directed to PetroChina.PetroChina and GeoJade didn’t reply to requests for remark.Ladies look forward to fishing boats to return with their catch to promote alongside the freeway; 1kg sells for about 1,500 Iraqi dinars or €1. Fishing continues illegally regardless of a breeding season ban. {Photograph}: Daniela SalaContacted by the Guardian, Unesco harassed its “important concern over the continued vulnerability of the pure elements of the property to grease and gasoline developments”.Disadvantaged of their livelihoods, Hawizeh’s residents are left with few choices. In Mustafa’s village, a whole bunch of houses have been deserted.Umm Salman along with her sons at house in Chibayish. The household lived off catching fish within the marshes for generations however now struggles because the catches shrink. {Photograph}: Daniela SalaFresh protests broke out throughout the marshes three months in the past. A whole lot marched close to the Halfaya oilfield, denouncing new drilling permits. “This isn’t nearly at present’s drilling rights,” Mustafa stated. “We’re combating so the following era can know the wetlands our ancestors protected for 1000’s of years.”The unrest comes as Iraq boosts oil manufacturing amid a worsening water disaster. With one other scorching summer season beneath means, the pinnacle of Basra’s Human Rights Fee has referred to as for a state of emergency to be imposed, warning of a looming humanitarian catastrophe from shortage, air pollution and rising toxicity.What stays within the marshes is a quiet warfare – over land, water and reminiscence. “The federal government and the businesses have turned us right into a cake to be divided,” Mustafa says. “They deal with these waters like a enterprise alternative. For us, it’s life.”This investigation was supported by Journalismfund Europe and IJ4EU
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