'A lost paradise': Battling drought, Iraqi farmers are fighting hard to protect their treasured dates palms

Bare feet pressed against the rough trunk of a palm tree, his back supported by a metal and fabric harness, Ali Abed begins the climb to the dates above.

Once known as the country of "30 million palm trees," Iraq's ancient date-growing culture had already suffered from upheaval, especially during the 1980-88 war with Iran, before climate change became a major threat.

In the still lush countryside of central Iraq, near Janajah village in Babylon province, hundreds of date palms stand tall and majestic, surrounded by vines and fruit trees.

During harvest season, the branches are heavy with clusters of yellow and red dates.

Rising at dawn to avoid the searing heat, harvesters climb the palms using only their upper body strength, aided by a harness and rope wrapped around the trunk.

"Last year, the orchards and the palm groves were thirsty; we almost lost them. This year, thanks to God, we had good water and a good harvest," said Abed, a 36-year-old farmer from Biramana, a village a few kilometres (miles) from Janajah.

Once at the top, they pick the ripe dates, filling baskets that are lowered to the ground and emptied into basins, which are then loaded onto lorries.

Abed noted, however, that the harvest is much smaller now — about half of what it used to be. He once collected more than 12 tonnes but now brings in just four or five.

Abed criticised the lack of government support, saying aerial insecticide campaigns are not enough.

Iraq has spent over a decade trying to revive the date palm, a vital economic asset and national symbol.

Authorities and religious institutions have launched programmes and mega-projects to encourage tree planting and growth.

An agriculture ministry spokesperson told the official INA news agency last month that, "for the first time since the 1980s", the number of date palms had risen to "more than 22 million", up from a low of just eight million.

During the Iran-Iraq War, palm groves were razed in vast areas along the border to prevent enemy infiltration.

Today, dates are Iraq's second-largest export product after oil, which dominates export revenues and generates more than $120 million, according to the World Bank.

In 2023, Iraq exported around 650,000 tonnes of dates, official statistics show.

Yet around Janajah, many palm trees lie dead and decapitated.

"All these palm trees are dead due to the drought; the whole region is suffering", said 56-year-old farmer Maitham Talib.

"Before, we had water. People irrigated abundantly. Now, we need complicated machinery", he said, observing the harvest.

The United Nations has labelled Iraq one of the five countries in the world most vulnerable to some of the effects of climate change.

Rainfall is rarer and rarer, and in the next 25 years, the World Bank said the temperature will go up by an average of 2.5 degrees.

The country has endured four consecutive years of drought, though this year saw some relief with winter rainfall.

Climate change is happening and we cannot stop it

Last year, Iraq's Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani announced a campaign to combat the severe impacts of climate change, including planting five million palms and trees.

He told a climate conference that more than seven million Iraqis had already been affected by climate change and hundreds of thousands displaced by drought.

He cited challenges including "high temperatures, scarcity of rain and an increase in dust storms" as well as shrinking green spaces, which all "threaten food, health, environmental and community security".

Sudani, who took office in late October, said his government was launching "a grand afforestation initiative, which includes planting five million trees and palm trees in all governorates of Iraq".

He said the government was working on a wider "Iraqi vision for climate action", speaking at a conference in the southern city of Basra attended by foreign ambassadors and UN officials.

The plan would include promoting clean and renewable energy, new irrigation and water treatment projects and reduced industrial gas flaring, he said, without announcing details on funding or timeframes.

Sudani said Iraq was "moving forward to conclude contracts for constructing renewable energy power plants to provide one-third of our electricity demand by 2030".

Sudani also cited "efforts to preserve Iraq's rights in the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers", the two waterways whose flows have been reduced, with Iraqi officials blaming dams upstream in Turkey and Iran.

"The unilateral water control in the upstream countries increases the vulnerability of countries challenged by the effects of climate change," the Iraqi premier told the Basra meeting.

As part of the wider plan, the government cited the creation of green belts around cities to act as windbreaks against dust storms.

But water levels in the central marshlands and the Euphrates which feeds it are "dropping by half a centimetre a day," said engineer Jassim al-Assadi, of Nature Iraq, the country's leading conservation group.

That will get worse "over the next two months as the temperatures rise and more and more water evaporates," he added.

Late last year, the Norwegian Refugee Council found that 60% of farmers in four provinces of drought-hit Iraq had reported having to reduce cultivated areas or water used. 

"Climate change in Iraq is impeding the economic recovery of communities affected by conflict and precipitating risks of secondary displacement," the NRC said. 

Successive years of drought have already displaced tens of thousands from rural areas in Iraq, particularly in the southern provinces that face extreme heat during the summer.

In addition to drought, the authorities blame upstream dams built by Iraq's powerful neighbours Iran and Turkey for dramatically lowering water levels in the Tigris and Euphrates rivers which have irrigated Iraq for millennia.

Kifah Talib, 42, lamented the slow devastation wrought by the drought.

"It used to be paradise: apple, pomegranate, citrus trees and vines — everything grew here," he said.