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Abstract
Analysis of climatic data of the last three decades reveals that
there is a noticeable shift in climate and water resources regime
of north-east Iraq. Analysis was done on the five major tributaries of
Tigris River-Khabur, Greater Zab, Lesser Zab, Al-Adhiam
and Diyala rivers. At first glance, the region appears to have plenty of
freshwater, but due to high temporal and spatial variability
combined with inadequate infrastructure, water scarcity is widespread.
Agriculture is the primary user of freshwater, and therefore,
any adverse effect on water availability will have far reaching
consequences. For forecasting purposes, SWAT model was chosen for
simulation and GCM ensembles were used for long-range forecasts. The
paper explores how the population are adjusting to the
shift in climate regime and what kinds of climate change adaptation
measures are socio-culturally viable. The analysis framework
featured separation of freshwater availability into blue and green
waters, climate forecasts with a lead time of about half-a-century
to 2049-2069 and about one-century to 2080-2099, and feedback from
grass-root level of the government and focus groups as to
how the population are adjusting and likely to adjust in the future to
climate change.
Keywords: Climate change; Adaptation; Agriculture; Northeast iraq
Introduction
The north-east Iraq, which includes autonomous Kurdistan,
is regarded to have adequate freshwater, but due to high spatial
and temporal variability, and accessibility issues owing to lack of
proper infrastructure, water scarcity is widespread in the region.
Freshwater availability is of critical importance for food security,
public health and environment protection in the region, but detailed
information on water resources and water scarcity is very limited
[1] to address these issues adequately. Adding to the complexity in
addressing these issues is the need for conformity of strategies to
the social and cultural norms and expectations. Nevertheless, some
data exist in disperse and disparate sources, which hitherto have
not been used in planning [2], but can be collated for a coherent
and thorough assessment of water resources of the region. This
study attempted to achieve that objective, and then, explored the
implications in social-cultural context. The quantity and quality
of water resources in a basin is impacted by a multitude of factors
such as precipitation and other meteorological variables, vegetation
and other land cover, natural calamities such as hurricanes and
earthquakes, and induced catastrophes such as bushfires. Changes
in the quantity and quality of water can also occur with changes
in population, climate and land use with alteration in supply
and demand. Climate change has the potential to impact the
hydrological cycle through the alteration of evapo transpiration
and precipitation [3]. Changes also can be unprecedented because
the water system could be vulnerable to climate change outside the
range of historical events [4].
Falkenmark [5] first introduced the concept of blue water and
green water. Blue water is water which humans can directly access
such as stream flow and groundwater. Green water is water which
humans cannot directly access such as evapo transpiration and soil
moisture but it is useful for vegetation and agriculture. The blue/
green water notion has provided fresh ideas and new methodologies for
water resources management in several regions especially in
arid and semi-arid regions where water stress is severe due mainly
to increased socioeconomic development and population growth.
Blue/green concept can assist in supporting sustainable and
equitable water resources management Jansson 1999. In this study
SWAT model was chosen to simulate blue/green water due to its
popularity, it has been widely used in varied physiographic regions
and in various parts of the world [6,7]. SWAT is a physics-based
distributed model well recognized for the analysis of the impacts
of land management practices on water, sediment, agriculture, and
non-point pollution in large complex watersheds [8]. Furthermore,
SWAT model is capable of assessing the impacts of climate change
on hydrological and biochemical cycles on a long term basis [9]. As
is usually done, the impacts of climate change for the long-term has
been assessed in this study by making forecasts through General
Circulation Models (GCMs).
IPCC in its Fifth Assessment Report envisioned four
Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) of future
greenhouse gas concentrations, which replaces the SRES proposed
by IPCC in its Third Assessment Report. For brevity, this study
presents results from three RCPs - low (RCP2.6) which assumes
sustained net negative anthropogenic GHG emissions after 2070,
medium (RCP4.5) which assumes stabilization without overshoot
to 4.5 W/m2 radiative forcing after 2100, and high (RCP8.5) which
assumes continued anthropogenic GHG emissions. Coupled Model
Inter comparison Project 5 (CMIP5) uses a number of sophisticated
GCMs for climate forecasts. In this study six GCMs, namely CCSM4,
MIROC-ECM, GFDL-CM2.1, MRI-CGCM3, CNRM-CM3, and IPSLCM5A-
LR were selected for ensemble climate change projections
in north-east Iraq. The projected temperatures and precipitation
were downscaled by BCSD method Maurer 2014. After we analysed
the historical data and projected future climatic conditions and
availability of water resources, we sought feedback from General
Managers of Water Authority and focus groups on how the local
population are currently adjusting to already manifest climate
change, and how they are likely to adjust to the projected climate
change in the future. A General Manager in the Ministry of
Water Resources heads each basin who is assisted by engineers,
technicians and water monitors.
Study Area
Tigris River has five major tributaries namely Khabur, Greater
Zab, Lesser Zab, Al-Adhiam and Diyala Rivers (Figure 1). These
tributaries are located in the left bank of the Tigris River between
latitudes 33.20N and 37.30N and longitudes 42.90E and 46.90E
and have significant contributions to Tigris flow. These tributaries
are shared between Iraq and Turkey or Iraq and Iran except Al-
Adhiam River. The region is mountainous with many springs in the
north and east and changes to flat terrain in the south and west. The
mountainous areas generally get higher proportion of precipitation
with generally typical near-natural nival regime. The characteristics
of the basin of each tributary are summarized in Table 1.
Figure 1: Location map of the study area.
Table 1: Description of the basins of the five tributaries of Tigris River.
Impacts of Climate Change
SWAT model was used for hydrologic simulation and GCMs
were used for climate forecasts. Basic data requirements for SWAT
included digital elevation model (DEM), land use map, soil map,
weather data, and discharge data. DEM was extracted from ASTER
Global Digital Elevation Model (ASTERGDM) with a 30 meter grid
and 1*1 degree tiles (http://gdem.ersdac.jspacesystems.or.jp/
tile_list.jsp). The land cover map was obtained from the European
Environment Agency (http://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/
data/global-land-cover-250m) with a 250 meter grid raster for
the year 2000. The soil map was collected from the global soil map
of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
(FAO 1995). Weather data which included daily precipitation,
0.5 hourly precipitations, maximum and minimum temperatures
were obtained from the Iraq's Bureau of Meteorology. Monthly
stream flow data were collected from the Iraqi Ministry of Water
Resources/National Water Centre. To evaluate the performance
of SWAT, the sequential uncertainty fitting algorithm application
(SUFI-2) embedded in the SWAT-CUP package [10] was used. Figure
2 captures the decade wise changes in precipitation for the past
three decades. It is evident from the figures that water availability
is decreasing with time. This study considers the period 1980-
2010 as the baseline period for comparisons with future scenarios.
Figure 3 captures the changes which are expected in the future
from GCM outputs fed into SWAT - outputs from SWAT consisting
of 320 HRUs for simulation.
Figure 2: Spatial distribution of precipitation in Northeast Iraq.
Figure 3: The impacts of climate change on the precipitation of the five basins (a) Anomaly based on scenario RCP 2.6 for the
period 2049-2069, (b) Anomaly based on RCP 2.6 for 2080-2099, (c) Anomaly based on RCP 4.5 for 2049-2069, (d) Anomaly
based on RCP 4.5 for 2080�2099, (e) Anomaly based on RCP 8.5 for 2049-2069, and (f) Anomaly based on RCP 8.5 for 2080-2099.
Climate Change Adaptation
Although climate change is a physical process linking with
alterations in climatic variables, it impacts and also is impacted by
social processes associated with the way society evolves over time.
Climate change has impacts on social, economic, and environmental
systems and forms scenarios for food, water, and health security
[11]. The capability of mitigating and adapting to climate change
influences is dependent on proactive measures adopted by different
socioeconomic groups living in differentiated geographical
circumstances [12]. Climate change intensifies the vulnerability
of the society. It leads to enhanced water scarcity, exposure to
diseases and undermining of growth opportunities. The impacts
of climate change in northeast of Iraq will vary geographically. The
south part which includes Diyala and Al-Adhiam are projected to
be most impacted by droughts and shortened growing seasons.
Extreme droughts have categorized that region in the last three
decades. Severe drought has caused a reduction in agricultural
production especially in the areas of rain-fed crop, which resulted
in an observed reduction in farmers' income. The social dimension,
which influences physical and economic dimensions, mainly boosts
vulnerability to climate change. In light of the sharp decline in
oil prices and the increase in terrorist operations which have
led to the deterioration of the economy, institutional structures,
and individual capabilities Iraq is unable to manage the current
climate variability and will struggle with projected changes due
to insufficient financial resources available for adaptation and
mitigation.
Vulnerability in the context of climate change has three
components which are exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity
[13]. For example, agricultural vulnerability to climate change
can be described in terms of exposure to increased temperatures,
decreased rainfall and thus reduction in water resources. The
sensitivity of crop yields can be described through how sensitive
the crops are to these changes. Adaptive capacity is defined as the
ability of the farmers to adapt to the effects of this exposure and
sensitivity by, for example, growing crop varieties that are more
drought-resistant. Recent studies stress the significance of socioeconomic
factors for the adaptive capacity of a system, especially
underlining the essential role of institutions, governance and
management in determining the ability to adapt to climate change
[14]. The adaptive capacity of any system is fundamentally shaped
by human actions and, it influences both the biophysical and social
elements of a system. Generally, agricultural adaptation includes
two forms of amendments in agricultural production systems. The
first strategy is enhanced agricultural diversification through, for
example, using drought tolerant varieties to temperature stresses.
The second strategy emphasizes crop management practices, for
instance, managing critical crop growth stages by not coinciding
with very harsh climatic conditions such as mid-season droughts.
According to Orindi [15], shifting the length of the growing period
and changing planting and harvesting dates are among the common
crop management practices that are used in agricultural adaptation
to climate change.
For this study, focus groups of farmers were formed organized
by general managers of each catchment. The discussion thread
centred on farmers' perception of climate change and the adaptation
measures they already have or would take to respond to the
negative impacts of climate change. From their answers it became
evident that planting trees, crop diversification, changing planting
dates, and soil conservation are the major adaptation strategies that
farmers recognize as appropriate for rain-fed agriculture. Planting
trees - This strategy includes growing trees in the farm to serve as
shade against severe temperature. Growing trees and a forestation
enhance agricultural productivity, where it often contributes to
climate change mitigation through enhanced carbon sequestration
[16]. Crop diversification - Farmers grow different crop varieties
that have ability to survive in adverse climatic conditions. In
addition, growers plant early ripening crop varieties and grow
drought tolerant crops and crops that are resistant to temperature
stresses. These are significant forms of insurance against rainfall
fluctuations [15]. Furthermore, planting diverse crop varieties in
the same field or various plots with different crops moderates the
risk of whole crop failure because different crops are influenced
differently by climate events and thereby gives some minimum
assured returns for livelihood security [17,18].
Changing planting dates - Early and late planting is another
strategy to adapt to climate change. This strategy enables farmers to
protect sensitive growth stages to ensure that these critical stages
do not coincide with severe climatic conditions. Soil conservation
- Soil conservation practices are to increase productivity on-farm
[19-23]. Decreasing rainfall and increasing prolonged periods
of drought, due to climate change, are highly likely to reduce
crops. Increasing soil health and fertility leads to increase crop
productivity, thus serve to moderate the impact of climate change
on agricultural productivity [24,25].
Conclusion
Northeast Iraq has witnessed declining water availability in the
past few decades and the model predictions are that the situation
will get worse in the future. These findings may have far reaching
consequences because a large area already suffers from per capita
water scarcity. Already a majority of the farmers in the focus groups
have observed that the climate has become hotter and drier, and
the availability of water has decreased significantly especially
in the southern region. This fits with the mathematical model
inferences. The good part is that most farmers are willing to adopt
modern methods to deal with climate change. A common theme
that emanated from the focus groups is that a large proportion of
farmers are poor and they cannot sustain consecutive crop losses
or very low yields. Some of them have quit farming and have moved
into or seeking alternative livelihood. For the stability of the social
fabric, it is desirable to entice those people back into farming and for
that to happen, financial support would be necessary. However, a
large portion of the population is Muslim, and therefore preferably,
finance source, destination and transaction process should be
free from interest (riba), gambling (maysir), uncertainty (gharar),
coercion (ikrah), and forbidden (haram) - directives of Islamic law.
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