Iraq’s oil boom blamed for worsening water crisis in drought-hit south

A boy walks on a boat left lying on the dried-up bed of a section of Iraq's receding southern marshes, June 2022. Photograph: Asaad Niazi/AFP/Getty Images

Western oil companies are exacerbating water shortages and causing pollution in Iraq as they race to profit from rising oil prices after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Water scarcity has already displaced thousands and increased instability, according to international experts, while Iraq is now considered the fifth most vulnerable country to the climate crisis by the UN. In the oil-rich but extremely dry south, wetlands that used to feed entire communities are now muddy canals.