In Iraq's famed marshlands, climate change is upending a way of life
CHIBAISH, Iraq — A water buffalo, her stomach bloated and haunches sunken, lies dying on a dry expanse of cracked earth. Her calf nuzzles her but she doesn't respond. A few yards away, another water buffalo, all skin and bone, wallows in the mud at the edge of the drying marsh waters.
The people who herd these animals in Iraq's southern marshlands are unable to save them. Drought and extreme temperatures that scientists link to climate change are altering the habitat around them and slowly ending a way of life as old as civilization itself.
This once-fertile land of reed thickets and deep waterways was part of ancient Mesopotamia, often referred to as the cradle of human civilization. For thousands of years, people have lived off the fish and water buffalo of these fertile marshes.
