August 21, 2024 This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlightedthe following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: fact-checked reputable news agency proofread by Tony Gamal-Gabriel In a plant nursery in northern Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region, hundreds of pine, eucalyptus, olive and pomegranate saplings grow under awnings protecting them from the fierce summer sun. The nursery in Sarchinar in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah is part of efforts to battle the destructive effects of deforestation in the region.
"Almost 50 percent of forests have been lost in Kurdistan in 70 years," said Nyaz Ibrahim of the UN's World Food Programme (WFP). She attributed the loss to "water scarcity, rising temperatures, irregular decreasing rainfall and also fire incidents". The loss is catastrophic, as the Kurdistan region is home to 90 percent of forests in Iraq, which has been among the hardest hit globally by climate change and desertification.
Much of this comes down to illegal tree felling and forest fires—intensified by summer droughts—as well as military operations on Iraq's northern border. In the nursery—the oldest in Iraq—workers are busy unloading young saplings from a trailer which they then line up on a patch of land. Here, some 40 varieties are developed to later be planted in forests or given to farmers, among them pines, cypresses, junipers and oaks—the emblematic tree of the Kurdish f.