The Strategic Center for Human Rights in Iraq warned on Friday (August 1, 2025) that the climate crisis facing the country has become a threat to national security and poses a direct threat to economic and social stability, calling on the government to adopt a comprehensive national strategy for climate adaptation.
The unprecedented climate shifts that hit Iraq between 2022 and 2024 overshadowed the agricultural and energy sectors, causing high rates of poverty and internal displacement, and the collapse of agricultural production and livestock breeding, said Fadel Al-Gharawi, head of the center, in a press release.
"Iraq ranks fifth in the world in terms of vulnerability to climate change, with temperatures in the summers of 2023 and 2024 exceeding 50 degrees Celsius in the center and south, with the highest drought rates in decades," al-Gharawi said. The rate of thermal increase amounted to 0.48 degrees per decade, almost double the global average, he said.
Al-Gharawi explained that the level of flow of the Tigris and Euphrates has decreased by 30 to 40% compared to natural rates, which led to accelerated desertification and the deterioration of agriculture, as wheat production decreased 37% and barley 30% in 2022, while Iraq lost more than 100,000 agricultural dunams annually in 2023 and 2024, and 71% of agricultural land was threatened by drought.
About 130,000 people were internally displaced between 2022 and 2023 due to the drought, while 40 percent of farmers abandoned farming altogether, and 80 percent of rural households became dependent on humanitarian aid. The livestock sector has also collapsed, with the number of buffaloes dropping from 150,000 in 2015 to less than 65,000 in 2024, and sheep and cattle breeding has declined sharply.
On the public health front, dust storms and heat waves have led to thousands of cases of sunstroke and respiratory illnesses, Al-Gharawi said, noting that one storm in 2022 alone hospitalized more than 5,000 people in just two days.
Al-Gharawi concluded his statement by calling on the government to "adopt an urgent national strategy for climate adaptation, including planting 5 million trees within the Green Iraq Initiative, launching solar energy projects to generate 1 GW of electricity, with direct support programs for affected farmers, an immediate shift to renewable energy, and integrating the climate change file into national economic policies."
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