Middle East drought a threat to global food prices

Varying degrees of drought are hitting almost two thirds of the limited arable land across Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, the Palestinian territories and Iraq.   

"Going back to the last 100 years, I don't think you can get a five-year span that's been as dry," said Mohammad Raafi Hossain, a U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) environmental economist.   

The dry season has already hurt prospects for the cereal harvest in areas of Syria and to a lesser extent Iraq. Several of the countries under pressure are already significant buyers of grain from international markets.   

The Standard Precipitation Index (SPI) shows the region has not had such low rainfall since at least 1970.   

This was part of the initial findings of a joint technical study on Drought Risk Management undertaken by several U.N. agencies, including the FAO, UNDP and UNESCO, that would be formally published later this month, Hossain said.   

Water and agriculture authorities, alongside specialist U.N. agencies, have begun preparing plans to officially declare a state of drought that spreads beyond the Eastern Middle East to Morocco and as far south as Yemen, climatologists and officials say.   

Drought is becoming more severe in parts of the Eastern Mediterranean and Iraq, while Syria, having seen several droughts in recent decades, is again being hit hard, said Mohamad Khawlie, a natural resources expert with Planinc, an international consultancy focused on geospatial studies in the Middle East and Africa (MENA) region.   

In Jordan, among the 10 countries facing the worst water shortages globally, Hazem al-Nasser, minister of water and irrigation, told Reuters precipitation levels were the lowest since records began 60 years ago.   

Even after an exceptionally heavy snow storm that hit the region in mid-December, the kingdom's dams are still only 42 percent full, down from 80 percent last year, officials say.   

In Lebanon, where climate change has stripped its mountain slopes of the snow needed to recharge groundwater basins, rain is "way below the average", said Beirut-based ecosystem and livelihoods consultant Fady Asmar, who works with U.N. agencies.   

He said the stress on water resources from prodigal usage was exacerbated by the presence of nearly a million registered refugees since the Syrian civil war began in 2011.       

In Iraq, which once boasted the largest tracts of fertile arable land in the region, it is only three years since the last major cycle of drought ended, which covered more than 73 percent of the country.   

Extracts from a soon-to-be released U.N.-commissioned study says drought in Iraq will persist, increasing in severity from 2017 to 2026, increasing further the dependence on foreign food imports by one of the top grains importers in the world.   

The U.N. study extracts say Turkey, where much of Iraq and Syria's water resources originate, has cut the volume of water flowing into the Euphrates and Tigris rivers by dam construction to meet their own growing domestic needs.
   

REUTERS