New Scientist - Before 2100, Fertile Crescent Likely To Return to Desert

[hatrack]

Is it the final curtain for the Fertile Crescent? This summer, as Turkish dams reduce the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to a trickle, farmers abandon their desiccated fields across Iraq and Syria, and efforts to revive the Mesopotamian marshes appear to be abandoned, climate modellers are warning that the current drought is likely to become permanent. The Mesopotamian cradle of civilisation seems to be returning to desert.

Last week, Iraqi ministers called for urgent talks with upstream neighbours Turkey and Syria, after the combination of a second year of drought and dams in those countries cut flow on the Euphrates as it enters Iraq to below 250 cubic metres a second. That is less than a quarter the flow needed to maintain Iraqi agriculture.

Tensions have been growing since May, when the Iraqi parliament refused to approve a new much-needed trade deal with Turkey unless it contained binding clauses on river flows. But Turkey appears in no mood to compromise. In July, it announced the final go-ahead for yet another dam, the Ilisu on the Tigris.

Meanwhile, according to Hassan Partow at the UN Environment Programme, Iraq's hydrological misery is compounded by Iran, which is also building new dams on tributaries of the Tigris. "Some of these rivers have run completely dry," he told New Scientist. And Iraq itself is set to worsen the problem with its own dam building, he says. This year construction is set to begin on another Tigris tributary at Bekhme Gorge in Iraq's northern province of Kurdistan. At 230 metres it will be one of the world's tallest dams.

EDIT

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17517-fertile-crescent-will-disappear-this-century.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=climate-change

[Nihil]

1. The smart thing for Iraq to do ...

... would be to bomb one of the Turkish dams while the US still
have a large enough military presence there to prevent any significant
reprisals.

The Turkish "water terrorism" will not provoke any response as the
US troops are all on premium-priced bottled water (courtesy of good
old Halliburton) but although the Turks would still get away with
small-scale murder reprisals, they wouldn't be able to do
too much in case they impacted the US bases ...

:shrug: