Azzam Alwash
Eden Again: Oil, Water, and Restoration
Wednesday, May 17, 2006, 12:30 PM
Produced with Mercy Corps in celebration of their 25th Anniversary. Click on the logo below to learn more about Mercy Corps.Portland-based Mercy Corps works amid disasters, conflicts, chronic poverty and instability to unleash the potential of people who can win against impossible odds. Since 1979, Mercy Corps has provided $1 billion in assistance to people in 81 nations.
Mercy Corps believes that clean water is a basic human right. Whether improving long-neglected rural water infrastructures, resolving resource-based conflicts, or ensuring access to potable water during disasters, Mercy Corps is committed to providing clean water around the world.
Dr. Azzam Alwash is the Director of the Eden Again Project, an organization working to restore the marshlands of southern Iraq and Iran. Encompassing an area larger than the Florida Everglades, these wetland ecosystems were destroyed during the 1990’s.
The extensive marshlands of Mesopotamia represent a unique component of our global heritage. The seas of reed beds were home to the ancient communities where human civilization began more than 5,000 years ago. Scholars regard the marshes as the site of the biblical “Garden of Eden,” the “Great Flood,” and the birthplace of the patriarch Abraham.
The current marsh dwellers are our only link with this rich cultural past. Following the end of the Gulf War in 1991, the marsh dwellers were important elements in the uprising against Saddam Hussein’s regime. To end the rebellion, the regime implemented an intensive system of drainage and water diversion structures that desiccated over 90% of the marshes. The reed beds were also burned and poison introduced to the waters. It is estimated that more than 500,000 were displaced, 95,000 of them to Iran, 300,000 internally displaced, and the remainder to other countries. By January 2003, the majority of the marshes were wastelands.
Before their desiccation, the marshlands historically comprised the largest wetland ecosystem of Western Eurasia. A rare aquatic landscape in the desert, they also provided habitat for important populations of wildlife, including endemic and endangered species. The key role played by the marshlands in the intercontinental flyway of migratory birds, and in supporting coastal fisheries of the Persian Gulf, endows them with a truly global dimension.
The impacts of marshland desiccation on wildlife was devastating. Several endemic species of mammals, birds, and fishes may have become extinct. The marshlands’ disappearance as a key wintering and staging site in the intercontinental migration of birds placed an estimated forty species of birds at risk and caused significant reductions in their populations. Fisheries in the marshlands disappeared, and Gulf fisheries, dependent on the marshland habitat for spawning migrations and nursery grounds, also experienced significant reductions. Ecosystem damage extended to the Shatt al-Arab and the Persian Gulf.
In May 2003, water began to return to the marshlands through the actions of local marsh dwellers and Iraq's Ministry of Water Resources. As of May 2004, up to 40% of the former marshlands have been reflooded. On the ground, some of the reflooded areas have experienced rapid regrowth of marshland vegetation; other areas are slowly recovering; while some reflooded areas remain barren. The recovery of the ecosystem has yet to be fully assessed. The Marsh Dwellers are also coming back, with as many as 42,000 people returning to their traditional lifestyles within the reflooded areas.
Born in Kut, Iraq in 1958, Dr. Alwash spent much of his younger years in Nasseriya on the fringes of the marshlands. His father Mr. Jawad Alwash was the district irrigation engineer, and Azzam used to accompany him on trips into the marshlands to resolve water disputes. He left Iraq in 1978 as a result of the Baathist regime.
Azzam completed his Bachelor of Science (Civil Engineering) at California State University at Fullerton, and his PhD in Geotechnical Engineering at the University of Southern California. Subsequently, he worked for 20 years as a soils engineering consultant in southern California.
In 1997, he became active in Iraqi expatriate politics. He is on the Board of Directors of the Iraq Foundation and the Iraqi Forum for Democracy. In August 2003, Azzam took a leave of absence from his consultancy practice to direct the Eden Again operations in Iraq. He now lives permanently in Iraq, dividing his time between Baghdad, the marshlands, and international speaking engagements.
Click here to learn more about the Eden Again Project.
Lecture Summary, written by Azzam Alwash
The bad news from Iraq is relentless. In 2003 I returned to my homeland to help in its reconstruction and its revival. After 3 years of struggling, sometimes I despair. But even now, though violence rages, there is good news I feel compelled to share.
I am speaking of the Mesopotamian Marshlands, the largest wetland in the Middle East, even eclipsing the size of the Florida Everglades. The marshlands provided shelter to millions of migratory waterfowl and numerous threatened species of wildlife. They also nurtured the ancient Sumerian culture, and their modern descendants the Marsh Arabs who carried on many of the ancient lifestyles and traditions. In the 1980s, the marshlands covered more than 5,000 square miles and were home to 500,000 people. The regime of Saddam Hussein, in actions amounting to genocide, reduced the marshlands to less than 300 square miles and its inhabitants to 87,000. Many Marsh Arabs died. The lucky made it to refugee camps in Iran, while others were internally displaced.
Within days of coalition troops moving past the marshlands in April 2003, the Marsh Arabs began their own campaign: they brought the water back. To date, almost 2,000 square miles have been reclaimed from the desert and more than 90,000 refugees have returned to their homeland. Together with other Iraqi scientists and engineers, we formed "Nature Iraq", the country's first environmental conservation group, dedicated to restoring the marshlands and their culture.
In my work I have visited the tiny village of Abu Subat repeatedly. At first, it was desert. I watched it be transformed as water spread over the parched land, and tiny shoots of reeds popped up through the desert scrub, eventually becoming a giant, watery reed forest. People came back to the area and began to harvest the reeds, using them to re-build their traditional homes in the way of their ancestors. I saw the water buffalo herd rise from nothing to 6,000.
In 2004, a man named Kareem came back to Abu Subat with his family of ten. He told me that after Saddam Hussein dried the marshes, he had moved to Tikrit where he was able to purchase reeds for his wife and children to weave into mats for sale, while he himself hired out as a day laborer. I looked at the hovel that he called his homestead, his meager worldly possessions, at his sickly young kids and thin wife, and I asked him why he came back to a place with no schools, no electricity, and most importantly, no work. He answered simply, "I came back for my dignity." In the marshlands he has reeds for free, he can fish for free, he does not have to beg for work. In the marshlands, he has hope for the future.
I want the dignity of all the Marsh Arabs returned. I want to help them reclaim the marshes so they can practice their thousands-year-old culture - while having access to proper health care, education, electricity and communication with the larger world. Is this just my pipe dream? Not in the least. Iraq is about to build the first pilot village in the marshes where modern life conveniences are provided in an environmentally sensitive manner.
I also hope that someday "eco-cultural-tourists" will come to our New Eden. They will come to see the Ziggurat at Ur (the world's first city), tour the nearby archeological excavations, and then spend a week relaxing and bird-watching in the peaceful marshlands, experiencing the authentic culture where western civilization began. That someday may be many years away, but only a few short years ago the good news I share today seemed only a remote possibility.