Rising Heat Drives Crippling Sandstorms across the Middle East

Fishermen navigate their boat on the Tigris River during a sandstorm in Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday, July 3, 2022. (AP)
Fishermen navigate their boat on the Tigris River during a sandstorm in Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday, July 3, 2022. (AP)
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Rising Heat Drives Crippling Sandstorms across the Middle East

Fishermen navigate their boat on the Tigris River during a sandstorm in Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday, July 3, 2022. (AP)
Fishermen navigate their boat on the Tigris River during a sandstorm in Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday, July 3, 2022. (AP)

Over the past two months, Iraqis have been living, working and breathing in thick clouds of dust, as at least nine sandstorms - lasting up to several days each - have hit the country, blanketing everything in grit.

Hospitals have reported a surge in admissions, with thousands of patients coming in with severe respiratory illnesses, while schools and offices have had to close and flights have been grounded for days at a time.

"I can't walk outside without coughing or covering my mouth," Azzam Alwash, founder of non-governmental green group Nature Iraq, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation from his home in Baghdad.

The latest storm "kept me in the house for two days. I have asthma, so I have to stay inside to protect my lungs," he said.

Iraq, Iran, Syria and other Gulf states are no strangers to sand and dust storms (SDSs) which have historically occurred in the hot months from May to July when strong northwesterly winds carry large amounts of dust throughout parts of the region.

But these days the storms are coming earlier and more frequently, rising well above the once-normal once or twice a year, starting as early as March and spreading over a wider area.

As governments struggle to cope with the dusty onslaught, environmentalists and government officials say what's driving the threat is a combination of climate change and poor water management practices that together are turning more of the region's soil into sand.

They warn that rising temperatures and changing weather patterns suggest there's worse to come, unless governments can work together to cut climate-changing emissions and reduce the health and financial impacts of the waves of sand sweeping through the region.

"The increase in droughts is a particular concern," said Kaveh Zahedi, deputy executive secretary for sustainable development at the United Nations' Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific.

He said affected countries should invest in early warning and forecasting systems, craft more efficient water and land management policies, and put in place insurance and social protection measures to help the most vulnerable communities recover from the storms.

A perfect storm

Travelling thousands of kilometers, each sand and dust storm can wreak havoc through a dozen countries.

They damage buildings, powerlines and other vital infrastructure, kill crops, reduce visibility for drivers and interrupt air, rail and water transportation, according to a 2019 report from the World Bank.

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) loses about $13 billion a year to the effects of sandstorms, from the costs of cleanup and recovery to treating health problems and a decline in productivity, the report says.

Kaveh Madani, a research scientist focused on environmental justice, security and diplomacy at City College of New York, said the dangers posed by sand and dust storms have been overlooked by local and international governments for too long.

"This transboundary and transgenerational issue ... is only becoming more dangerous every year," said Madani, who previously served as deputy head of Iran's environment department.

"It's really disappointing to see that one of the most debilitating environmental problems of the 21st century is not being properly recognized by major intergovernmental and scientific agencies," he said in a telephone interview.

The Middle East has always been naturally burdened with strong winds, dry soil and hot weather, which combined provide the perfect conditions for sand and dust storms.

But climate experts say rising heat coupled with decades of poor water management and inefficient agricultural practices have degraded land across the region, making it easier for dust particles to be picked up and swept across vast areas.

A report released by the International Monetary Fund in March shows that, since the 1990s, the Middle East has been heating up twice as fast as the global average.

In many MENA countries, 85% of water goes to agricultural uses, according to the World Bank.

Climate experts say unsustainable agricultural practices such as overgrazing, excessive use of chemicals and machinery and excessive irrigation - often encouraged by heavily subsidized water tariffs - are helping drive desertification in the region.

Also to blame, said Madani, are the strings of dams being built on some of the region's major rivers, which can block water flowing to wetlands. Conflicts also can force farmers to flee, leaving their land to become barren and dry.

"Add to this mix the problem of deforestation, land use changes, abandoned farmlands ... and you have the recipe for more frequent and intense dust storms," he said.

Dust diplomacy

Tense political relations between some of the countries hardest hit by sandstorms hamper negotiations on how to tackle the problem, said Erik Solheim, who was executive director of the UN's Environment Program between 2016 and 2018.

But some nations have made individual efforts to fight dust storms in the region.

Saudi Arabia has committed to planting 10 billion trees within its own borders with the aim of reducing carbon emissions and reversing creeping land degradation.

Trees can revive parched land by trapping more rain in the ground and slowing the evaporation of water from the land, while their roots bind soil and prevent erosion.

In 2016, the Abu Dhabi-based Masdar Institute of Science and Technology launched a web-based modelling system that provides near-real-time maps of concentrations of atmospheric dust and other pollutants in the region.

But environmental experts who spoke with the Thomson Reuters Foundation said existing measures are not enough to prepare the region for the extreme dust storms that worsening climate change could bring.

"Unless immediate and serious action is taken in the Middle East to address the matter of dust storms, outcomes like forced migration of people can turn (storms) into a global problem rather than a regional one," Madani said.

Solheim, currently a senior advisor to the World Resources Institute think tank, is among several experts and officials calling for UN climate talks this year in Egypt and next year in the United Arab Emirates to become a forum for governments to engage in diplomacy aimed at curbing the scourge of sandstorms.

"Many other environmental issues are higher on the agenda, but sand and dust storms have hardly been talked about in climate talks," Solheim said.

"(The problem) has been seen as a secondary issue, even though it is one of the most harmful environmental issues for human beings."



'We Will Die from Hunger': Gazans Decry Israel's UNRWA Ban

 Itimad Al-Qanou, a displaced Palestinian mother from Jabalia, eats with her children inside a tent, amid Israel-Gaza conflict, in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, November 9, 2024. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
Itimad Al-Qanou, a displaced Palestinian mother from Jabalia, eats with her children inside a tent, amid Israel-Gaza conflict, in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, November 9, 2024. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
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'We Will Die from Hunger': Gazans Decry Israel's UNRWA Ban

 Itimad Al-Qanou, a displaced Palestinian mother from Jabalia, eats with her children inside a tent, amid Israel-Gaza conflict, in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, November 9, 2024. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
Itimad Al-Qanou, a displaced Palestinian mother from Jabalia, eats with her children inside a tent, amid Israel-Gaza conflict, in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, November 9, 2024. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed

After surviving more than a year of war in Gaza, Aisha Khaled is now afraid of dying of hunger if vital aid is cut off next year by a new Israeli law banning the UN Palestinian relief agency from operating in its territory.

The law, which has been widely criticised internationally, is due to come into effect in late January and could deny Khaled and thousands of others their main source of aid at a time when everything around them is being destroyed.

"For me and for a million refugees, if the aid stops, we will end. We will die from hunger not from war," the 31-year-old volunteer teacher told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.

"If the school closes, where do we go? All the aspects of our lives are dependent on the agency: flour, food, water ...(medical) treatment, hospitals," Khaled said from an UNRWA school in Nuseirat in central Gaza.

"We depend on them after God," she said.

UNRWA employs 13,000 people in Gaza, running the enclave's schools, healthcare clinics and other social services, as well as distributing aid.

Now, UNRWA-run buildings, including schools, are home to thousands forced to flee their homes after Israeli airstrikes reduced towns across the strip to wastelands of rubble.

UNRWA shelters have been frequently bombed during the year-long war, and at least 220 UNRWA staff have been killed, Reuters reported.

If the Israeli law as passed last month does come into effect, the consequences would be "catastrophic," said Inas Hamdan, UNRWA's Gaza communications officer.

"There are two million people in Gaza who rely on UNRWA for survival, including food assistance and primary healthcare," she said.

The law banning UNRWA applies to the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Gaza and Arab East Jerusalem, areas Israel captured in 1967 during the Six-Day War.

Israeli lawmakers who drafted the ban cited what they described as the involvement of a handful of UNRWA's thousands of staffers in the attack on southern Israel last year that triggered the war and said some staff were members of Hamas and other armed groups.

FRAGILE LIFELINE

The war in Gaza erupted on Oct. 7, 2023, after Hamas attack. Israel's military campaign has levelled much of Gaza and killed around 43,500 Palestinians, Gaza health officials say. Up to 10,000 people are believed to be dead and uncounted under the rubble, according to Gaza's Civil Emergency Service.

Most of the strip's 2.3 million people have been forced to leave their homes because of the fighting and destruction.

The ban ends Israel's decades-long agreement with UNRWA that covered the protection, movement and diplomatic immunity of the agency in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

For many Palestinians, UNRWA aid is their only lifeline, and it is a fragile one.

Last week, a committee of global food security experts warned there was a strong likelihood of imminent famine in northern Gaza, where Israel renewed an offensive last month.

Israel rejected the famine warning, saying it was based on "partial, biased data".

COGAT, the Israeli military agency that deals with Palestinian civilian affairs, said last week that it was continuing to "facilitate the implementation of humanitarian efforts" in Gaza.

But UN data shows the amount of aid entering Gaza has plummeted to its lowest level in a year and the United Nations has accused Israel of hindering and blocking attempts to deliver aid, particularly to the north.

"The daily average of humanitarian trucks the Israeli authorities allowed into Gaza last month is 30 trucks a day," Hamdan said, adding that the figure represents 6% of the supplies that were allowed into Gaza before this war began.

"More aid must be sent to Gaza, and UNRWA work should be facilitated to manage this aid entering Gaza," she said.

'BACKBONE' OF AID SYSTEM

Many other aid organizations rely on UNRWA to help them deliver aid and UN officials say the agency is the backbone of the humanitarian response in Gaza.

"From our perspective, and I am sure from many of the other humanitarian actors, it's an impossible task (to replace UNRWA)," said Oxfam GB's humanitarian lead Magnus Corfixen in a phone interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"The priority is to ensure that they will remain ... because they are essential for us," he said.

UNRWA supports other agencies with logistics, helping them source the fuel they need to move staff and power desalination plants, he said.

"Without them, we will struggle with access to warehouses, having access to fuel, having access to trucks, being able to move around, being able to coordinate," Corfixen said, describing UNRWA as "essential".

UNRWA schools also offer rare respite for traumatised children who have lost everything.

Twelve-year-old Lamar Younis Abu Zraid fled her home in Maghazi in central Gaza at the beginning of the war last year.

The UNRWA school she used to attend as a student has become a shelter, and she herself has been living in another school-turned-shelter in Nuseirat for a year.

Despite the upheaval, in the UNRWA shelter she can enjoy some of the things she liked doing before war broke out.

She can see friends, attend classes, do arts and crafts and join singing sessions. Other activities are painfully new but necessary, like mental health support sessions to cope with what is happening.

She too is aware of the fragility of the lifeline she has been given. Now she has to share one copybook with a friend because supplies have run out.

"Before they used to give us books and pens, now they are not available," she said.