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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iraq is experiencing its worst drought since 1933, the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) representative said on Saturday. Farmland available for cultivation has been halved and rural families are being driven from their homes.
The entire region has been affected by drought, but Iraq is bearing the brunt of the crisis, Salah Haj told Rudaw's Bakhtiar Aziz.
'Iraq's preparations and infrastructure are not adequate considering these challenges. The negative effects first hit the wetlands, where the drying rate has reached over 70 percent - a very dangerous level,' he said.
Sandstorms have worsened the situation for buffalo herders, many of whom have left their villages as wetlands shrink. Farmland cultivation has also dropped by half, forcing farmers to seek livelihoods elsewhere.
Haj urged Iraq to modernize its irrigation systems, water storage, and planting methods to conserve water and called for a substantial budget and targeted programs to combat drought and desertification.
FAO is working with the federal and Kurdistan Regional governments on water projects, including restoring a water-sensing system in Erbil to optimize irrigation times. Haj said the Kurdistan Region's situation is better than the rest of Iraq's.
Iraq's water crisis is caused by reduced precipitation, rising temperatures, and mismanagement. The lack of a comprehensive water-sharing agreement with neighbors Turkey and Iran, who have built dams on shared rivers, has deepened the crisis.
More than 17,000 families have left Iraq's southern provinces over the past decade due to drought and desertification, Ali Abbas, spokesperson for the Migration and Displaced Ministry, said in July.
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