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Iraq’s rising temperatures a ‘wake-up call' for world

UN human rights chief Volker Turk said Iraq is one of the five most affected countries by the “global boiling” era.

AFP

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk (R), gives a press conference in Baghdad. / Photo: AFP

Iraq's rising temperatures and protracted drought are a "wake-up call" for the world, United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk has said in Baghdad.

Turk spoke to AFP news agency during a visit to Iraq on Wednesday, which the UN says is one of the five countries in the world most touched by some effects of the climate crisis.

Iraq has been experiencing its fourth consecutive summer of drought, and temperatures in parts of the country, including the capital Baghdad, and in the far south, have been around 50 degrees Celsius.

"Rising temperatures plus the drought, and the fact that the loss of diversity is a reality, is a wake-up call for Iraq and for the world," Turk said.

"When we look into the situation of these communities, we look into our future," he added.

"The era of global boiling has come, and here we can live it and see it on a daily basis," Turk said at the end of his four-day visit, echoing comments by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres last month.

Guterres had said, "The era of global warming has ended. The era of global boiling has arrived."

He called for immediate and bold action, after scientists confirmed July was on track to be the hottest month in recorded history.

Scientists look beyond climate crisis, El Nino for extreme heating of Earth

Shatt al Arab waterway dried up

In Iraq's far south, high salinity has harmed fishing in the Shatt al Arab waterway, where the Tigris and Euphrates converge before spilling into the Gulf.

Turk, who visited the south, told a news conference that he was shown by community leaders and others "pictures of the lush date palm trees that – just 30 years ago – lined parts of the now dried-up Shatt al Arab waterway".

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohamed Shia al Sudani has vowed that battling the climate crisis would be one of his priorities, but activists say little has been done.

Turk told the news conference there had been reports "of violence, intimidation and death threats against environmental activists" in Iraq.

One of them, engineer Jassim al Assadi of Nature Iraq, the country's leading conservation group, was abducted for two weeks in February and held by armed men.