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UN to help restore 'Biblical Garden of Eden' in Iraq
The United Nations will undertake an $11 million project to help restore the marshlands of southern Iraq, considered to be the site of the Biblical Garden of Eden.
The United Nations will undertake an $11 million project to help restore the marshlands of southern Iraq, considered to be the site of the Biblical Garden of Eden.
The marshes suffered massive damaged as Saddam Hussein build dams on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and vast drainage to punish Marsh Arabs whom he suspected of supporting uprising against his regime after the first Gulf war.
The project, funded by the Government of Japan, will support sustainable development through environmentally sound technologies, providing drinking water, sanitation and pilot wetland restoration for the Marsh Arabs.
In 2001, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) released satellite images showing that 90 per cent of these wetlands, home to rare species like the Sacred Ibis and African darter, and a spawning ground for fisheries, had been lost.
Further studies released in 2003 showed an additional 3 per cent, or 325 square kilometres, had gone. Experts feared the entire wetlands could disappear entirely by 2008.
The marshlands of Mesopotamia constitute the largest wetland ecosystem in the Middle East and Western Eurasia and are widely considered to be culturally significant.
UNEP's Executive Director Klaus Toepfer said the agency has long been documenting their destruction and alerting the world to their demise. "I am, therefore, delighted that the Japanese Government has stepped in to support a new beginning for the Marshlands and the Marsh Arabs," he said.
Satellite images indicate that by April this year around a fifth, or 3,000 square kilometres, had been re-flooded. The challenge now is to restore the environment and provide clean water and sanitation services for up to 85,000 people living there.
The new project will initially target around a dozen settlements with small-scale water treatment systems, some of which are likely to be solar powered.
Reed beds and other marshland habitats that act as natural water-filtration systems will be restored, benefiting not only local residents but also providing new habitats for birds and other wildlife.
