Executive Summary and Policy Recommendations
The government of Iraq and international organizations operating in the country have taken a technocratic approach to climate change adaptation. In the agricultural sector, the government has provided incentives for farmers to adopt sustainable farming methods in the form of subsidies and loans for the purchase of drip irrigation systems and solar panels. The government also buys wheat at a slightly higher price from farmers who use sustainable farming techniques. For their part, international organizations have both shaped the Iraqi government’s policies on climate adaptation and equipped small numbers of farmers with solar and drip irrigation systems. They have also endeavored to provide training to farmers in sustainable farming techniques and in maintaining renewable energy systems.
These technical approaches have failed to address the socio-economic inequalities and political hierarchies that farmers must navigate to practice agriculture, and which makes some social groups more vulnerable to climate change than others. Many farmers cannot afford to take out loans to purchase sustainable agricultural systems and corruption at various levels continues to hamper the efforts of both international organizations and the Iraqi government, limiting the effectiveness of these schemes. Moreover, the post-2003 neoliberalization of the Iraqi economy and the fact that the country’s political elite and affiliated militias have captured the agricultural sector has left Iraqi farmers without a market for their produce.
In response, Iraqi farmers have adopted unstructured, spontaneous local adaptation strategies to try to navigate extreme weather conditions, political corruption, and neoliberalism. For example, to manage water scarcity, farmers have begun to dig wells and use groundwater for irrigation purposes. While well-digging risks depleting groundwater reserves, it is also a means for farmers to circumvent centralized, regularly politicized water allocations. In the face of extreme weather events, farmers have begun to grow new types of drought-resistant crops, planting more than one type of produce, so that if a particular crop fails during a season, they are still able to harvest and sell others. Yet often, they select crops they believe will be better able to compete with cheap imports from neighboring states.
Iraqi farmers’ adaptation strategies point to the need to move away from mere technical solutions and to challenge existing structures in a bid to achieve transformative adaptation; that is, a system-wide transformation that addresses the root-causes of vulnerabilities to climate change, taking into consideration socio-economic factors and a fairer distribution of political, cultural, and institutional power in society.
The views represented in this paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Arab Reform Initiative, its staff, or its board.
