Wetlands of Mass Destruction
| Author | Curtis J. Richardson |
| Position | Professor at the Nicholas School of Environment and Earth Sciences and Director of the Duke University Wetland Center, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina |
| Pages | 36-41 |
Page 36 ❧ THE ENVIRONMENTAL FORUM Copyright © 2009, Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, D.C. www.eli.org.
Reprinted by permission from The Environmental Forum®, July/August 2009
On June 16, 2003, I entered south-
ern Iraq under military escort. I
was not prepared for the devasta-
tion and poverty that continuous
wars had placed on its people nor
the mass destruction across the
landscape, especially in the Mes-
opotamian marshes. e U.S. Agency for Interna-
tional Development had asked that an exploratory
team enter Iraq two months after the fall of Baghdad
to assess whether the Mesopotamian marshes could
be restored and to determine the status of the heavily
persecuted Marsh Arab population and their fishing
and agricultural livelihood. Until that time no data
existed on the current ecological status of the marsh-
es, their once great populations of waterfowl, and
their rare endemic birds and mammals. No western
scientific team had been in the marshes since the late
1970s, and for the past 20 years Iraqi scientists had
been forbidden to study the vast wetlands.
e word Mesopotamia means “between rivers,”
referring to the Tigris and the Euphrates. e Meso-
potamian marshes were considered by many to be
the “cradle of western civilization” and have often
been referred to as the “Garden of Eden” (esiger
1964, Nicholson and Clark 2002). e marshes
were once the largest wetlands in southwest Asia and
covered more than 15,000 square kilometers, an area
nearly twice the size of the original Everglades. How-
ever, by the year 2000 less than 10 percent of the
area remained as functioning marshes (Partow 2001,
Brasington 2002, Alwash and Alwash 2004).
e loss of these ecologically critical wetlands was
of further concern because they were once home
to 300,000 to 500,000 indigenous people (Young
1977, Coast 2002). In 1991, at the end of the first
Gulf War, a populist uprising by the Shi’a (the largest
Muslim sect in Iraq) was crushed with brutal force by
the Sunni-controlled Baghdad regime. e military
raided settlements, killed at least tens of thousands
of Marsh Arabs (although the actual number may
be higher), burned settlements, and killed livestock,
destroying the core of the local economy. Today, the
population living near the marshes is estimated to
be only 75,000 to 85,000 (DAI 2004). e remain-
der are scattered in villages throughout the desert or
are refugees in the larger cities. More recent data is
hard to obtain, but reports continue to say that more
and more villages are springing up in the marshes as
they are restored (Alwash and Alwash 2004, UNEP
2007).
e marshes were also once famous for their bio-
Wetlands of Mass
Destruction
e restoration of the Mesopotamian
marshes of southern Iraq is now underway,
and the area is seeing the return of native
plants and animals. However, the long-
term future of the former Garden of
Eden depends on sufficient water and the
designation of national wetland reserves
Curtis J. Richardson
Curtis J . Richardson is a Professor at
the Nichol as S chool of E nvironmen t
and Earth Scien ces and Director of the
Duke Univ ersity Wetland Center, Duke
University, Durh am, North Carolina.
na T i o n a l we T l a n d s ne w s l e T T e r
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