Meeting the trees of Kurdistan
From forests destroyed by conflict to olive trees of peace and pomegranates of abundance
It’s my first trip abroad since the pandemic (apart from to Finland where my family lives). It’s my first trip since I completed my travel to the trees to research my book. And the way I travel has changed because of it. Wherever I go, I am looking for the trees.
I am here in Kurdistan with my partner (who is as cool as anything - editor’s note: this was his edit), where his family comes from. Kurdistan is a semi-autonomous region in northern Iraq. This isn’t the place to go into the ins-and-outs of all the conflicts that have happened here over the recent years and centuries. But the trees have, literally, been caught in the fire. More than 2.2 million acres of woodland have been destroyed between 1999 and 2018 by wildfires and deforestation. And some of this is due to fighting. A National Geographic headline from 2019 declares: ‘Iraq races to save last of Middle East’s forests from burning’ The story goes on to explain:
“Iranian border guards have started scores of blazes along their shared frontier to clear their lines of sight along key cross-border smuggling routes. Turkish airstrikes on militant camps have reduced tracts of forest to cinder”
Amran Ismail is a member of the Iraqi Kurdish forest police and he is quoted in the story as saying:
"We are few and the problems are many,” Ismail said. "God willing we'll protect the trees. It's our identity. Our homeland. But we need more help.”
“It’s our identity. Our homeland.”
A report by a Dutch peace NGO, Pax, showed that 50,000 acres was burnt in 2020 alone from the impact of bombs. 23,000 acres of the burned land is part of special protected areas rich in biodiversity. The report sought to draw attention to the impact that conflict has on the environment - and the related impacts on people (beyond the direct impact on the loss of life and livelihoods).
“The loss of biodiversity, forests and agricultural lands is hard to overcome. It prevents a short term return to normal live for local people, the Environment and Conflict Alert pleads for more attention to the disturbance of ecological balance in military conflict, which will have an environmental and humanitarian impact for generations to come.
I haven’t been to this area of Kurdistan so I haven’t seen the burnt lands with my own eyes. But in doing this research, I was reminded of an exhibit I saw in Milan relating to the conflict in Syria. The following is an extract from my book-in-progress.
There’s an exhibition called ‘Broken Nature’ at the Triennale Museum. One quote captures my attention. It is part of a work called Birdsong by the Sigil Collective.
“What is a bird?”
“What is a tree?”
Asks a 5-year-old boy in a Syrian prison.
A little boy is being told a story in which there is a bird and tree. But he has no frame of reference for what is a bird, and what is a tree, from inside the prison walls that he is trapped behind.
In another book displayed in the exhibition, called ‘Excavating the sky’ by Khaled Malas of the Sigil Collective, there is a double-page spread with four photographs taken in Syria in 2012. Top left: rows of olive trees. Top right: close-up of olives ripening in the trees. Bottom left and bottom right: red earth, hole in the red earth, people looking at the hole, bare grey tree branches. This is all that is left of the olive trees, symbol of peace.
I hadn’t thought before of trees as victims of war. Yet here, the olive trees, many of which were likely to be hundreds of years old, were destroyed. As well as the lives of the people who tended them.
Olive trees grow in Kurdistan as well. The production of olive oil and olives is a growing industry. 110 tons of olive oil are produced daily in seven factories. Recent research on agroforestry in Kurdistan showed that olive trees are the preferred trees of famers in the lowlands.
Iraq is the country fifth most affected by climate change in the world. Tree planting is as vital here as anywhere else in the world, if not more so. Tree cover has declined by 47% since 1999 in the Kurdistan region. There are tree planting programs under way, with a plan to plant 100 million trees in Erbil province by 2030.
Agroforestry could be one way to combine tree planting with food production, restoring orchards which were common across the region. We visited the village that my partner’s father came from, and he spoke of the orchard that was there when he was a boy, growing apples, pomegranates, walnuts and grape vines. I hope that trees and reforestation will be an important part of Kurdistan’s future going forward.
“It’s our identity. Our homeland.”
Fascinating x