Adding to the ever-growing list of disasters being generated by the equally ever-growing climate crisis, two river systems that birthed numerous civilizations throughout history—India’s Ganges River and the Tigris–Euphrates in Iraq—are facing severe water shortages due to a combination of global warming and a mismanagement of the remaining water that is still available by Indian and Iraqi authorities.

Although its waters sustain 600 million people in India and Bangladesh, the Ganges River has suffered increasingly acute droughts in recent years. Using paleoclimate records from the Monsoon Asia Drought Atlas (MADA) dataset and modern records, researchers from IIT Gandhinagar and the University of Arizona built a computer model of the Ganges’ water levels over the past 1,300 years. They found that the drought that struck the sacred river between 1991 and 2020 was 76 percent worse than its previous worst recorded dry spell that occurred in the 16th century; additionally, they found that droughts on the Ganges in modern times last longer and are more frequent.

The cause of this drying was determined to be a weakening of the summer monsoon rains; while the researchers found that there are natural variations that are affecting these seasonal patterns, the main driver behind the disruption is a combination of the global warming-fueled increase of the temperature of the Indian Ocean and an increase in man-made aerosol particles produced by human-generated pollution.

“The recent drying is well beyond the realm of last millennium climate variability, and most global climate models fail to capture it,” according to the study text. “Our findings underscore the urgent need to examine the interactions among the factors that control summer monsoon precipitation, including large-scale climate variability and anthropogenic forcings.”

Adding to the plight is the rapid retreat of the Gangotri glacier, the Himalayan-based source of the Ganges, that has retreated nearly a kilometer (0.62 miles) over the last two decades alone; upstream dams such as India’s Farakka Barrage project reduce the already diminished flow of the river into Bangladesh, resulting in not only water shortages but also salt contamination in the agricultural regions that rely on the river.

In Iraq, stretches of the twin rivers that birthed numerous civilizations, the Tigris and Euphrates, have also been running dry, with their flows seeing a 27 percent drop during the country’s worst drought in over a century.

Again, this situation is being caused by climate change, but also exacerbated by water restriction measures being conducted by dams in Syria and Türkiye, who are facing their own water shortages. Additionally, Iraqi officials are being accused of mismanaging the crisis by making deals with Iran and Türkiye that benefit themselves, rather than the Iraqis citizens they’re supposed to represent.

Although the region has historically been known as the Fertile Crescent, agricultural land along the rivers’ respective routes have suffered numerous collapses, sparking an economic and humanitarian crisis; the most acutely-affected region is Basra, a city of 3.5 million people who have come to depend on daily deliveries of water for their survival, with some residents having to travel several kilometers each day to receive their daily allotment of water.

Adding to the problem is that with the reduced downstream flow, saltwater from the Persian Gulf has been seeping upstream, adding to the accumulation of manmade pollutants that are no longer being flushed out to sea. The invasion of brackish water is also causing problems for the species that normally call the region home.

“Basra has lost 26 to 30 diverse marine species due to saltwater intrusion,” according to water expert Alaa Al-Badrani. “This has created a new, hybrid environment unsuitable for both freshwater and seawater species. With salinity levels rising, the water is also unfit for agriculture.”

Writing in an article for Chatham House, Hayder Al-Shakeri, a research fellow with the think-tank’s Middle East and North Africa program, says that the water crisis won’t be resolved until Iraq institutes reforms at both the domestic and regional levels.

“Domestically, Iraq should establish a national water diplomacy body with a clear mandate to negotiate, monitor flows, and to coordinate between ministries, governorates, and the Kurdistan region,” Al-Shakeri stated.