Restorative Redevelopment of Devastated Ecocultural Landscapes

The Iraqi marshlands housed a 3000+ year-old civilization until Saddam Hussein ruthlessly drained the marsh region following the 1991 uprising. Many of the insurgents fled to the marsh wetland region (between the Baghdad in the North and Basra in the South, and between the Tigris and Euphrates) when Saddam Hussein crushed the rebellion. Saddam then retaliated by draining the marsh areas, which not only housed a culture that had changed little over the centuries but which housed a rich and fragile ecosystem. Sustaining the Iraqi Marshlandsuses examples of restoration efforts around the globe to look at ways to best restore the Iraqi marshlands in order to make life there sustainable into the foreseeable future.