$1m UN plan to help restore ‘Garden of Eden’ in Iraq

The UN will undertake an $11 million project to help restore Southern Iraq’s marshlands, considered to be the site of the biblical Garden of Eden.

The marshes suffered massive damage as Saddam Hussein built dams on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and vast drainage to punish Marsh Arabs whom he suspected of supporting uprising against his regime. The project, funded by Japan, will support development through environmentally sound technologies, providing drinking water, sanitation and pilot wetland restoration. In 2001, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) released 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.

The marshlands of Mesopotamia constitute the largest wetland ecosystem in West Asia and Western Eurasia and are considered to be culturally significant. With the collapse of Saddam’s regime, residents began opening floodgates and breaching embankments to flood the marshlands.

Satellite images indicate that by April this year around a fifth, or 3,000 square kilometres, had been re-flooded. — (PTI)