The effects of climate change are already evident in the Middle East and North Africa,  becoming a hotspot for climate-induced migration. In Iraq, studies show temperatures will rise faster than the global averages, while the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) anticipates temperatures will rise by two degrees. 

Southern Iraq is drying up, both its water sources and ways of life. Water scarcity, already an issue due to water mismanagement and damming from Turkey and Iran, is now exacerbated by low rainfall, further contributing to drought. Low rainfall and saltwater intrusion from neighboring infrastructural changes mean less freshwater availability. The lack of water affects everything from personal use to all the way down the supply chain. Ninety percent of Iraq’s local populations are dependent on the dwindling Tigris and Euphrates rivers, already at historically low levels. In 2019, this situation displaced over 20,000 people, where today, over 18,000 people remain internally displaced due to drought, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). According to IOM, 145 areas across Iraq were impacted by drought in 2019.

Mirroring a situation reminiscent of internal displacement in Syria pre-conflict, researchers say Iraq’s internal migration had strained already dwindling resources and thus created tensions between old and new residents as well. 

Still others are trapped in the rising heat and lack of water, unable to afford the costs of fleeing climate change in Iraq’s rural south. 

Across the Middle East and North Africa, climate researchers at the Max Planck Institute are sounding alarm bells that temperatures are rising above levels habitable for human beings and will lead to a “new wave of refugees.” Experts contend the average summer temperatures in the region could rise by as much as 6 degrees, leading to six-week heatwaves with temperatures as high as 56 degrees Celsius (133 degrees Fahrenheit) and 60 degrees in cities. This past summer in Iraq, temperatures already reached peaks of 125 degrees Fahrenheit, where children died, residents suffered heat stroke and livelihoods were disturbed.  

The Mediterranean basin has seen a steep rainfall decline due to climate change, and a 2020 MIT analysis finds the region will see a 40 percent rainfall decline during the winter season over the next three decades. Unlike other regions, where expected temperature rises follow increases in rainfall, in the Mediterranean region, temperatures are modeled to increase alongside a steep decline in rainfall. In a region where security and state fragility are already volatile, a significantly drier and hotter forecast in the coming decades is terribly worrying. 

It’s deeply troubling that the resulting news media of such worrying climate models tend to be met with expectations of Global South migration to Global North countries, creating hyper alarmist security reactions. The reality is, of course, two-fold: the real alarm is the potential increased disproportionate suffering for frontline countries and that most climate-related displacement will be a mix of internal and regional cross-border movement, straining already vulnerable and refugee-hosting countries, and not the rich, high-emitting countries of the Global North. 

With about 30 percent of Iraq covered in desert, all of these added climate problems, along with a population rapidly increasing, which we detailed in this earlier Spotlight, renders an already vulnerable population from conflict, geopolitical tensions, decades of sanctions, chronic poverty and corruption, rather fragile. It’s no wonder then that right now, thousands of families across Iraq continue to be displaced from their homes in rural parts of the country due to the loss of arable land and water scarcity.

Noelia Martinez contributed to this article