Thread by @thetimes

#WorldAtFive🌍: There seems no relief in sight for a land devastated by a decade of conflict and now parched by a cruel drought
thetimes.co.uk/article/water-…

The once-fertile plains of the Euphrates, the Tigris and their tributaries have been decimated by a mixture of war, climate change and poor environmental policies.

Farmers are leaving the land as yields collapse. The lives of those who remain have entered a vicious circle, as they use diesel pumps to find groundwater ever deeper under the earth, denuding the reservoirs and polluting the land and air with fumes and residues.

“We failed to grow any wheat this year,” said Jassem Mohammed, a farmer from Deir Ezzor, to the south. “That is a catastrophe. No wheat, no bread.”

He said he had been able to irrigate his farm, two miles from the Euphrates, just once so far this year and was now dependent on pumping groundwater, but the quality was too poor for his crops.

A report by a coalition of aid agencies in August said that five million people in Syria and seven million in Iraq were “losing access” to water. In both countries, wheat production, the core of agriculture for populations whose staple is bread, is collapsing.

You can read the full story here:
thetimes.co.uk/article/water-…