Thirsty

Slowly but surely, climate change is killing the Gabes Oasis.  The fertile haven nestled between the Mediterranean Sea and the Tunisian desert has sustained its inhabitants for thousands of years.  

But as the rains become less frequent and salt levels rise, the lush vegetation above is being destroyed. In the last 30 years, almost 20 percent of the Oasis has been lost. Parcels of land throughout the vast forest of palms, pomegranates, and rows of vegetables are empty, where farmers faced with uncultivatable soil were forced to abandon their land.

Climate change, creeping urbanization, and industrialization have all played a part in destroying the rare ecology that makes the UNESCO world heritage site one of the only of its kind in the world.

Zakaria has lived in the oasis all of his life. He remembers when the best products in Tunisia were gown amongst the towering palms. At his feet, and all around him, the ground is white with salt that has risen to the surface from the rising water table below.

‘People called this place 'the paradise of the world' all the fruits you can imagine existed here but salt invaded the land little by little’.

Zakaria says that a huge amount of maintenance is required to fight against the rising salt and keep the oasis alive. "Farmers can no longer make a profit, they don’t have the courage or the financial means to work their land. They can only see how their plantations are dying day after day’.

Iraq is in the midst of one of the worst water crises in living memory. Drought is ravaging swathes of the country, leaving at least seven million people without access to water, food, and electricity and forcing farmers to abandon their land and dying animals to migrate to towns and cities.

The Diyala governorate in northern Iraq stretching from Baghdad to the Iranian border is one of the worst impacted by years of devastating drought. The province was one of the strongholds of Al-Qaeda and later of the Islamic State, and at the height of the violence, many communities were forced to flee. However, drought now threatens to displace those who returned once more.

Iraq is the fifth-most vulnerable nation in the world to the effects of climate change, with low rainfall levels and high temperatures depleting water supplies across the country. The man-made Lake Hamrin that connects to the Diyala River has dried up so much that part of the lake has become a desert plain. With drastically lower water levels, supply slows to a trickle long before it reaches the end of canals farming villages rely on for themselves, their crops, or their animals, leaving communities with little or no access to clean water.

Khalida has relied on the lake her whole life to sustain her farm. After her husband's death, she works on their land with her children. The drought forced her to sell her animals and killed everything she grew.

"It used to rain a lot. The rivers and water wells were full. We didn’t need the wells because the river had enough water for us and the neighboring areas around here".

“We had enough crops to be able to export to the north and the south. We had lots of land, there was enough rain, and the rivers were full. Not anymore.

The Wala dam is going dry. High temperatures and dangerously low rainfall have seen one of the largest reservoirs in Jordan that holds nine million cubic meters of water fall to only four percent capacity. As the second most water-scarce country in the world, with one of the lowest rainfalls, Jordanians cannot afford for their already limited water sources to disappear.

Jordan relies solely on rainfall to replenish its water supplies. As climate change is set to increase temperatures, droughts, and heatwaves in Jordan, and many of the most vulnerable Jordanians already live under the water poverty line, its repercussions will be most severe for the poorest, who are already suffering from its impacts.   

Faisal is a farmer in Madaba, an area outside of the capital Amman close to the dam.  His father and his grandfather before him all farmed the land near the hills that guard the dam. In three generations Faisal says the land has deteriorated so much that it is now almost unrecognizable. Lush greenery his stock would once thrive on has turned to dust.

Faisal is one of the few farmers who have stayed after the rains stopped coming. He misses the animals. Faisal’s family once had goats but it became so expensive to keep them alive that he sold them.

Where the dam was once full of water, it is now so low and the hills around it so dry that shepherds bring their animals to its basin so they can find some pasture and water.

Images ⒸOxfam/ Paula Gonzalez, 2022

Drone Footage. ⒸOxfam/ Pablo Tosco, 2022