How well people cope when weather patterns change depends on the details of their situation—both in terms of geography and politics—and their access to resources
not begin to describe Abu Ayman’s small patch of land in southern Iraq. The sun pounds down, sometimes pushing the temperature above 50°C . Dry earth and withered weeds crackle underfoot. It used to be a palm plantation, but no trees remain—just rows of untopped
Except that the calamity is still unfolding, and Abu Ayman has certainly not forgotten. Twenty years ago, he says, the canopy of palm fronds above was so thick that no direct sunlight reached the baking soil on which he is standing. Farming dates and other fruit earned him a good living, he adds as he snaps a salt-bleached twig off a desiccated shrub. Water from a canal fed by the Shatt al-Arab waterway, which glistens in the glare just a kilometre away, was adequate for his needs.
Muhammad Obaid, a relative of Abu Ayman’s, lost his palms in just the same way. But his land, right on the bank of the Shatt al-Arab, sits in the welcome shade of their replacements. The crowns of the young palms, still close to the ground, are interspersed with the odd fig or apple tree. The temperature in the shade is a good 10°C cooler than on Abu Ayman’s low and level sands. Birds twitter in the greenery.
He also has access to another key input: money. When the Shatt al-Arab is too salty he hires a truck to deliver fresh irrigation water. He and his brothers own a small grocery store, and so are able to invest the profits from that business into their farm. That is how they could afford the $150 a sapling needed to revive the plantation and the $35 per tanker of water. Without that money, his land would be as barren as Abu Ayman’s.
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