Reporter's Notebook: Echoes of Iraq in drought-stricken Syria

Al-NASHABIYAH, Syria - Farmers are deeply rooted in their land. During droughts, this bond can turn toxic as the parched earth slowly drains life and hope from its cultivators.

I've seen this in Syria and Iraq, and I will likely see it again as climate change drives water scarcity across the Middle East.

In May, I sat with Syrian farmers in al-Nashabiyah town, sipping on cold yoghurt drinks and hot tea as they told me how they cope with one of the most severe droughts in Syrian history.

I heard versions of these stories before, hundreds of miles south of the Iraqi capital Baghdad in the al-Meshkhab region where I went in 2022 to report on how drought had decimated rice paddies and once verdant fields.

There, the land was dying, and so was hope. I heard of farmers who had committed suicide, driven to despair by debt after seemingly endless droughts.

Both groups showed me dried-up canals where they once swam, recalling scents, sights and sounds now replaced by barren fields. They pointed to dead trees that they had nurtured as seedlings.

Some wept, others screamed, and just a few sought solutions to a crisis that many felt was beyond their control.

Years of violence and conflict in Syria and Iraq have often relegated the climate crisis - and action - to the back seat.

But drought does not care who is in charge, and climate change persists even when the news agenda is driven, particularly in the Middle East, by seemingly endless conflict.

Aid cuts deepen problems

Riven by political turmoil, the world has blown past crucial climate tipping points, and the funding needed to prepare communities for a hotter, drier future has withered.

Last year, the hottest on record, we hit 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7°F) of warming above average pre-industrial temperatures, scientists say. Beyond that threshold, we may face irreversible and extreme climate change.

The farmers I met in Syria described vicious heatwaves in May and spoke with dread of the summer to come.

They said the new government, which seized power in December, must supply water for irrigation as there is simply not enough to go around.

The U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization says the drought in Syria could lead to the failure of an estimated 75% of wheat crops - at a time when hundreds of thousands of Syrians are returning after the fall of Bashar al-Assad following 13 years of civil war.

There is some good news. The lifting of sanctions since former Islamist rebel Ahmed al-Sharaa formed a government could allow fertilisers and irrigation technology to be imported.

But the global outlook is bleak as financing for climate resilience programmes is under increasing threat.

When U.S. President Donald Trump froze aid and dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) earlier this year, 98% of funding related to climate change was terminated, said Refugees International, an advocacy agency.

The Trump administration is also seeking to weaken a global deal aimed at helping developing countries with the effects of climate change, Reuters reported in May, citing U.N. documents.

The people at the sharp end of these political machinations are the farmers I met in Iraq and Syria.

In al-Nashabiyah, they could not decide if they should demonstrate or send a petition or delegation to Damascus.

They did agree that they needed to make their voices heard.

"We are on the brink of death," said deputy mayor Mahmoud al-Hobeish. "We need to get the message out there that we are at our wit's end. Our souls are being squeezed out. This is the message we need to convey."

(Reporting by Nazih Osseiran; Editing by Ayla Jean Yackley.)