Professor Ali Hussein Ibrahim Al-Bayati

Department of Soil Sciences and Water Resources

College of Agriculture - University of Anbar

    Climate change is the long-term change in temperature and weather patterns. These shifts may be natural, for example, through changes in the solar cycle, or by human influence. In this context, it has been observed since the beginning of the nineteenth century that human activities have become the main cause of climate change. This is attributed to the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas, as their burning results in greenhouse gas emissions that work as a cover that wraps around the globe, which leads to trapping the sun's rays and raising temperatures.

According to Iraq's national inventory of greenhouse gases for the year 1997, Iraq contributed about 72,658 giga grams equivalent of carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere, and several sectors contributed to the production of this quantity, including the energy sector 54,419 giga grams equivalent of carbon dioxide, equivalent to 75. The industry sector has 6.422 giga grams equivalent of carbon dioxide, equivalent to 8.8%, and the agriculture sector 8.084%, equivalent to 11.1%, and waste is 3.733 giga grams equivalent of carbon dioxide, equivalent to 5.1%.

1. The impact of climate change on the agricultural sector

    The agricultural sector constitutes a major part of the economic and social life in Iraq, as it constitutes 8% of the value of the gross domestic product. Its arable land area is about 11.1 million hectares, which constitutes 26.2% of the total area of ??the country. Almost half of the arable land is located within the areas available for irrigation from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and their tributaries according to the technical and economic perspective, but the amount of water resources available from these water sources It only suffices to irrigate an area of ??about 3.3 million hectares. As for the other half of the arable land, 15% of it falls within the rainy areas guaranteed rain (the annual rainfall rate is more than 450 mm/year), and 23% of it falls within the semi-guaranteed areas (annual rainfall ranges between 350-450 mm/year), while the rest, which reaches 62%, falls within areas with no rain guaranteed (in which rainfall ranges between 50 -350 mm/year) and according to the geographical location and distribution of rain lines.

1. The vulnerability of the agricultural sector to climate change

   Most parts of Iraq, according to the amount of rainfall and the prevailing temperature rates, are located within what is known as arid and semi-arid climatic regions of the world. Therefore, the most  prominent effects of climate change on the country’s ecosystem are mainly reflected in the agricultural system and its water supply, where the most prominent climatic causes of this effect on agriculture are the rise in temperatures, variation and decrease in rainfall regimes, and an increase in the frequency of droughts compared to before and an example of the drought years 2001-2000-1999 and 2009-2008, As farmers, small farmers, livestock breeders