For Marsh Arabs, feeling at home means caring for the land, the water, the reeds, and the animals. How do environmental and human-made changes in the Anthropocene affect the value of belonging to a place affected by such changes?
Mesopotamia’s marshlands are rich in biodiversity. As part of agricultural development and oil exploration, the marshes were drained during the 1950s to the 1970s. In the 1980s and the 1990s, this process was intensified by Saddam Hussein to expel Shia Muslims from the marshes. Certain marshes were restored in 2003, by which point 90% had been drained. In 2013, thanks to Azzam Alwash and his team at Nature Iraq, Iraq’s first national park was established in the Mesopotamian Marshlands. At that time, communities displaced from marshes were living in towns or refugee camps in other areas of Iraq or Iran, where more conservative social norms ended up diminishing their unique culture. Following the restoration of the marshes, many Marsh Arabs returned, but their home had changed a lot. As Hanne Kirstine Adriansen has examined, the mainstream media featured rehabilitation projects and the return of Marsh Arabs to the wetlands as a sort of Garden of Eden. Unfortunately, the fact that the oil industry, climate change, and the proliferation of dams in the region were affecting the marshes, and as such people’s homes, was overlooked.
Since the US-led invasion ousted Hussein, fishing in the marshes using electroshocking has increased dramatically, The Guardian reports. According to Anna Sophia Bachmann, an environmental adviser at Nature Iraq, electroshocking began during Iraq’s war with Iran, and reached unprecedented levels after the marshland was partially restored. Likewise, illegal fishing and hunting pose challenges to marsh management. As a result, traditional lifestyles have been disrupted, leading to a sense of social and economic insecurity, irresponsible behaviour toward wetlands, and the undermining of values going back thousands of years.
For humans to belong, it is vital to have a sense of safety. For Marsh Arabs, this is based on their longstanding connection to the wetland ecosystem. To restore people’s quality of life and sense of belonging to a place such as the Mesopotamian wetlands, it is necessary to take into account new environmental conditions in a region often perceived as restored wilderness.
Questions
- What is the value of belonging in the Anthropocene?
- What are the different types of value assigned to the marshlands by humans?
- What are the inherent tensions of wilderness restoration?
Further readings
Bow, V., & Buys, E. (2003). Sense of community and place attachment: the natural environment plays a vital role in developing a sense of community. In L. Buys, J. Lyddon, & R. Bradley (Eds.), Social Change in the 21st Century 2003 Conference Refereed Proceedings (pp. 1–18). Centre for Social Change Research, School of Humanities and Human Services QUT.
Carroll, R. (2005, April 19). “Garden of Eden” dying of poison. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/apr/19/iraq.rorycarroll.
Mesopotamian marshlands officially recognized as Iraq’s first national park (n.d.). Goldman Environmental Foundation. https://www.goldmanprize.org/blog/mesopotamian-marshlands-officially-recognized-as-iraqs-first-national-park/.
Richardson, C. J., Reiss, P., Hussain, N. A., Alwash, A. J., & Pool, D. J. (2005). The restoration potential of the Mesopotamian marshes of Iraq. Science, 307(5713), 1307–1311. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1105750.
Author: Somayyeh Amiri