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MR. STEELMAN: Good morning. I'm Richard Steelman [ph.], the Chief of the Office of the Iraqi Reconstruction. And I'd like to invite you to this third in a series of presentations about USAID's development programs in Iraq. Today, we're going to be discussing agriculture and in addition our work in the marshlands. Agriculture, as many of you know, is a very critical area of development in Iraq. It has great potential for both economic growth and the generation of employment. And there is a great deal that has to be done to bring this sector up to its full potential. To discuss our activities in agriculture today, we have Doug Poole, who is the expert in agriculture in the Office of Iraqi Reconstruction. And without further delay, I will introduce Doug Poole. MR. POOLE: Good morning. It's a pleasure to be here. I started with the Iraq Reconstruction Office in February of 2003. I graduated from the University of Illinois in agriculture and also from the University of Florida, center for tropical agriculture. I've had the opportunity to work with kind and generous colleagues here. Before we start, I want to thank a couple people, Christie Lewis for helping put together some of our visuals here. I also want to acknowledge John Wilson, my colleague and friend who is the asian near east senior environmental officer and has been very instrumental in preparing background information for both the agriculture reconstruction and development project as well as the marshlands. A third person I'd like to acknowledge this morning is Jonathan Greenham [ph.], who works at the USAID Baghdad mission. I hope he's listening this morning. I would like to give my regards to him, because a lot of the information that we're presenting this morning actually comes from the field. I want to make it very clear that our office here in Washington backstops the mission Baghdad. The policy and funding decisions and management decisions are all made out there. We are the backstop for that. So our hats are off to those people in the mission who work very closely with not only the Ministry of Agriculture, but also the Ministry of Water Resources and a lot of the counterparts. This morning I'd like to go through very briefly our agricultural program and also go through the marshlands program. They are two different programs. I suggest what we do is have a brief overview. I've got a few--had some handouts outside, but also go through some of the background, maybe a few questions if you've got any on agriculture. Then we'll move right into the marshlands presentation. If you do have questions, please note them down. We'll be able to certainly handle those as we go forward. One of the questions you might as is why is agriculture important? Why does USAID want to invest in agriculture? Well, if you look at some of the population statistics that we have, the agriculture supports about anywhere from 25 to 35 percent of the world population. That population is the most vulnerable, the poorest, and actually live in the most remote areas. A lot of the reconstruction activities that USAID is doing right now conducting are targeting urban areas. We think we should target a lot of the rural areas. We look at agriculture that can actually drive, be the engine that can drive economic growth. You should also know, and probably have read, that after oil agriculture is the largest value sector and provides more to the GDP than anything else. Our vision is trying to create an effective, productive, and a job generating free market economy. You also probably know that in the past the Saddam previous regime has not invested in agriculture. They have, as a result you've got dilapidated irrigation systems. You've got distorted prices through the public distribution system. You've got problems with grain silos with transport, a lot of distortions, and a lot of lack of maintenance in the agriculture economy. The public distribution system, as you know, feeds about 60 percent of the people. There are 14 different commodities in this food basket. This was started under the sanctions, about 1995/96, under the UN sanctions where Iraq actually sold oil and in exchange were able to buy not only food, but also medicines, irrigation equipment, tractor supplies, health care, medicines, and so forth. Food only accounted for about 25 percent of that total number. Currently Iraq is pending about $250 million to $300 million per month on importing food commodities. Then you ask, can Iraq, could Iraq produce some of this grain, primarily wheat, on their own? And the answer is yes. Currently the production and the quality of wheat is not up to standards for bakeries and so forth. So they prefer to buy Australian wheat, American wheat, outside wheat to fulfill that. If you look at some of the constraints, if you look at the economic benefits of agriculture, but you also need to look at some of the constraints. Remember that Iraq was the cradle of civilization, part of the fertile crescent. Irrigation and a lot of the crops have evolved from this area, the last 5 to 7,000 years. And so these people have irrigated lands throughout the centuries. As a result you have a high base for production, but you also have a problem in constraints with water logging that results in high salinity. As you know, high salinity, crops are not accustomed to that and yields are poor. I think what's happened throughout history, you've had bust and boom. You've had boom areas where you've had actually good water management. And as people get more greedy, actually put more land into agriculture production, those lands are poorly drained. And as a result you've got high salinity and then lands are abandoned. Lands lay fallow for four or five, six years, that are leeched naturally, and then put back in production. So I think what you've got is peaks and troughs throughout history in terms of this kind of production. Also, you have limited water supply. And without a water sharing treaty with some of Iraq's neighbors, there is limited water in both the Tigris and the Euphrates. The question is, how do you allocate water between agriculture use, industrial use, and the puddle of water that goes to the local population. Another constraint is land holdings. We think most of the land holdings have been under state owned lands and leased to private farmers. That left a lot of the small farmers without land. And one of our goals is to look at a land registry program connected with a geographical information system. And then look at somehow how we might get into land tenure reform, looking at tenure security, and also looking at a land market in the future. Most of the agriculture in the north is rain fed. There is some center pivot operations, as you get south toward Baghdad, into the further south you've got gravity irrigation. Obviously, one of the areas we can work with is on farm water use and water use efficiency which our projects are working with now. One piece of information, data that you may have seen, I think it's on our fax sheet, is that when I talk about salinity, approximately 75 percent of the area is affected with salinity. So if we want to increase production, one thing is how do we deal with the water logging, how do we deal with salinity? One area is looking at salt tolerant varieties. Other areas is how do we improve drainage. As you get out beyond Baghdad, beyond Mosul, beyond Irbil, Bosra, and so forth, the infrastructure for roads, for farm to market transportation, lack of communication, lack of telephone, lack of internet, these kind of things, lack of information to farmers and farmer groups, marketing their crops is certainly a constraint. And, of course, you have the disenfranchisement of a lot of people who are maybe not with the right, have not been with the right political party, have not been able to even get on the public distribution list. And as a result haven't even been counted in part of the political process. We hope to change that. And AID as several interlocking projects to kind of bring that around. You've all seen, I think you have a list on the handout outside of the crops, the north is generally looking at barley and wheat. In the south you've got rice, corn, a little bit of sorghum, and so forth. These are all the irrigated crops. Quite a bit of dairy scattered throughout, and also water buffalo in the south. One of the crops you're going to hear a lot about is the date palm. Date palms have been native to Iraq. They're like 629 different varieties of date palms. Their surrounding neighbors also compete with them. During Iraq/Iranian war, Saddam had a lot of date palms actually cut down and has reduced that date palm population from something like 30 million trees to like 15 million trees. One project that we're looking at is establishing date palm nurseries to actually refurbish date palms and then look at value added processing packaging to put date palms back on the market on an international basis. To give a little bit of history of how AID got involved, realize we went in there in early May of 2003 without a lot of background information. We did have information from the FAO, World Bank, which then produced an assessment, but not much on the ground information. We had proposed in the contract that was actually awarded to actually do assessments and to look at poultry revitalization, look at the animal health sector, looking at grain storage handling, looking at the value added in terms of vegetable marketing, looking at the irrigation infrastructure, looking at livestock production. All of these things were actually put on hold. We put out a contract, an RFP in June of 2003. It was awarded under full and open competition to develop alternatives in October. That team was on the ground immediately in early November and proceeded with some of the initial assessments, but had to truncate and actually reduce some of their work force because we had limited amount of funds. Did not have the amount of funds we thought we were going to have. Fortunately or unfortunately in the supplemental agriculture was actually crossed out, was actually zeroed out. But L. Paul Bremmer, under that time, under the coalition provisional authority, had said, listen, agriculture, he was convinced that agriculture was certainly an important aspect. That it could be the engine that drives economic growth. He said, please make us a transition plan in concert with the Minister of Agriculture and look at job creation and employment over the long term. That plan was produced by development alternatives in close concert with the Ministry of Agriculture's staff, produced April 15th in last year. That is available. We can certainly share that with you. Had two phases. One phase was looking at short-term stabilization in the first year, or first six months. How do we get people jobs? How do we keep people off the streets, keep the rural employed? And actually stem the migration of rural youth going into urban areas and causing security problems. The second phase was looking at longer term policy reform, national programs for cereals, basically wheat, corn, and rice, and looking at what do we do for reducing subsidies basically from the public distribution system, and looking at land tenure. And fortunately, the total amount of funding we had in 2003 is a little over $11 million. That has allowed us to actually get a footprint in Iraq. Our contractors, Development Alternatives, has offices in Baghdad and Irbil, also working in Bosra, and have worked directly through Iraqis and have been quite successful in looking at, just a few accomplishments, looking at how we rehabilitate some of the veterinary clinics in the north, establish some sheep dipping tanks at the border with Turkey. Basically looking at how can we jump start the economy. We've also had a successful crop technology demonstration, 344 hectors of salt tolerant wheat varieties that have been produced on farmer land, not necessarily Ministry of Agriculture lands, and using the right cultural practices, the right irrigation, the right fertilization, pest control, and looking at those yields versus conventional methods. In turn, these farmers that we have, we invite farmers in for field days. These farmers then, in turn, can distribute these results to other people, other surrounding farmers. We've also worked very closely with the Ministry of Agriculture. As you have read and experienced, the ministry has been involved in production, mostly the input supply system, and has also had very low market prices for basically wheat. We've tried to help them extract themself from the actual production aspects and look at more at the Ministry of Agriculture being a regulatory body dealing with food safety, dealing with border control, plant and animal quarantine, this kind of thing, so being more of a regulatory body than being a production operation. The Ministry of Agriculture has, I think, 10 or 11 state owned enterprises that deal with seed and fertilizer supply. These have all been supplied to farmers at subsidized rates. They have sharply reduced those subsidies this year we can happily say, on their own, because they realize that the subsidy programs won't last very long. In the past when you've had subsidized fertilizers, subsidized seed, and your guaranteed price, no matter what the quality of your wheat was, it was very hard not to make money. The Ministry of Agriculture has raised the price of wheat from about $110 a ton to like $165 a ton. This morning I saw on an e-mail it may go as high this year to $200 a ton. So farmers are being rewarded for producing good quality. We think by increasing the production, jump starting the economy, what happens is that you will increase farmer employment, you will help improve services to farmers. We're also looking at a farm mechanization program. There are lots of tractors and farm equipment that actually are in the countryside that have been not very well repaired. And looking at ways that we can actually start up small businesses and looking at spare parts operations where we can look at how to start the small business and get tractors, combines, and planting equipment back in shape. Another area we're looking at is see if we can work very closely with the Ministry of Water Resources. Understand that the Ministry of Water Resources actually manages the water in reservoirs as it comes across the borders into Iraq through dams, and so forth, and releases it to irrigation canals which then at the farm gate the Ministry of Agriculture takes over. We're looking at how that water allocation can take place. I might talk a little bit later about possible master plans that we might deal with. But looking at that combination of how we deal with the Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Water Resources as well as with the Ministry of Environment to look at the water supply, the water quality, and maximum water use efficiency on the farm. We've also worked with the universities putting in internet hubs, as well as the Ministry of Agriculture to try to connect them. Realize that both the Ministry of Agriculture extension and research services, as well as the academic part of the universities, the College of Agriculture, these people have been well trained. However, they have been isolated from international conferences and scientific publications and are basically several years behind in terms of modern agriculture technologies and policy reforms. We worked through the Head Program through the University of Hawaii that has an exchange program, a partnership program with the University of Mosul and several other universities, looking at exchange programs, looking at ways to beef up their agriculture curriculum, supplying them information for their libraries, books, periodicals, scientific journals. And, of course, then having participant training going bringing Iraqis over here as well as having ex pats and other middle eastern universities, including Ecarda [ph.] and some of the other international research organizations, go to Iraq and share their information there. Fortunately in the reallocation of funding that Ambassador Negroponte undertook with Ambassador Taylor at the end of July, first of August, reallocated approximately $100 toward agriculture to ramp up those projects that we already have underway. Understand that the contractor development alternatives was fully competed under an open competition. And we had a base year and two options years. We are actually looking at how to fund those activities. And some of the potential activities that we might look at in addition to expanding those we already have on the ground are the crop technology program, expand that to areas of the center of Iraq and also to the south. We're looking at livestock improvement, not only through breeding but also through animal health improvement. We're looking at high value products, how do you diversify the agriculture? Should we go into vegetables? What products, should we go into flowers? What products could be selected that could be exported or supply local hotels or hotels in surrounding countries. The other big area we're looking at is the transition, transitioning the government basically out of the agriculture production business into a more responsible regulatory body. And that could be some policy reform, could be a lot of capacity training. And it could be working with them on some of the subsidy reduction. We also think the private sector is very important, private sector agriculture. Unfortunately, there's not very much foreign investment now in agriculture. You might know that before in the late eighties, U.S. was able to sell over $800 million of U.S. goods, mostly agricultural goods to Iraq. We think that there's a big market for agricultural products, machinery, fertilizers, inputs, these kinds of things. So if you increase local production with the trickle down effect, you will certainly put more money in the pockets of farmers and the down stream economy as well as stabilize the local rural economy. So I think the private sector, helping them prepare business plans, look at business opportunities, look at joint ventures, helping them with connecting with investors on the outside possibly starting their own small businesses, whether it be processing or investment in livestock or cattle operation would be successful. And then the other large program is looking at soil and water management program. Basically, how do you manage this limited irrigation water. How do you reclaim saline soils and how do you look at long term production, sustainable production for both rice and wheat and some of the other crops. I think that basically in a thumbnail gives an overview of where we are. I think I will stop now and kind of invite questions from you on clarifications before we actually get into the marshlands programs. I've got some maps I want to show you a little bit later on. But maybe some questions from you or suggestions on our programs or inputs or programs you know about that might be able to provide some synergy to what AID is doing in Iraq right now. Please identify yourself so the folks on the other end can know who you are. Why don't you turn it on? MR. : [Inaudible.] MR. POOLE: Good question, Scott. The consortium that's run by Development Alternative will be the continuing contractor to actually implement this continuing project. They have a series of private sector firms, universities, international research organizations that are part of their consortium. The reason I didn't give you anymore detail on those five or six components is, frankly, the team is in the field right now preparing those work plans. If you look at the accomplishments we talked in the past, it will be ramping up those. And those basically have to do with crop demonstrations, the modern crop technology, and extend those to several areas in Iraq. We'll be working with crop and livestock improvement programs. This is basically animal health and also increasing the breeding stock. We're looking at seed multiplication. All of these details are to be worked out. I don't have that information right now. And our people in the field are working with those and will be able to supply that very quickly I think. So we expect to have a work plan soonest and then be able to share that. Should there be needs or gaps in the contractors needs, and so forth, I'm sure they will be looking possibly for outside help. But their consortium was put together basically to handle both the research extension policy, jump starting the local economy, looking at resource sustainability, looking at policy reform. All of those different skills and sectors are basically represented in their consortium. And we can look at their reports. They are very good at giving weekly reports, updates on their activities. This will continue. And these are actually available on the daily fact sheets that come out and are available to the public. MR. : [Inaudible]--went in there with a major effort. You find that it's almost identical to the situation we are, that we have in Iraq right now. And I think we can gain a lot from the experience that we had in Egypt over 20 some years to really shorten that time frame to make the same adjustments in Iraq. I think there's a lot to be learned there. I was lucky enough to be able to take ten officials from the Ministry of Agriculture on a two-week tour in Egypt meeting with all the Egyptian officials that have been dealing with this and fighting AID tooth and nail back in the eighties when I was there. And now they are the best advocates to private sector, to policy reform, and so on and so forth. It's endless. It's really kind of mind boggling and very rewarding for all of those in AID, including at myself at the time, to see that those reforms work. Now, the key is to do the same type of reforms but in a much shorter time frame. MR. POOLE: I think we endorse very much looking at surrounding countries. Egypt obviously is one, Jordan, Morocco, all through the middle east that can actually lend to these kind of lessons learned in taking people out as well as bringing some of those specialists into Iraq. I think is good. I think the mix between dealing with the private sector, looking at those opportunities versus how do we train and transform the Ministry of Agriculture into a regulatory is certainly a challenge. And it's that conundrum that we're in right now is the Ministry has basically, with their state owned enterprises, have been basically in control of all the production. It's basically how do you break that away and how do they then become either independent businesses or the private sector takes over that full production and government then does the policy on land tenure, looking at plant and animal protection, food safety, these kind of policy questions. The second thing I would add to that is that we are also working very closely with the other agriculture, the other USAID reconstruction projects. This is education. This is health. This is infrastructure. This is community action programs. All of these programs feed into basically what agriculture can do. Civil society is also important where you're setting up local governments in a lot of these areas. So we don't see agriculture as just a sector kind of sitting by itself or that's going to have just one impact. We look at it as an impact across several sectors and working very closely with people who are dealing with water and sanitation at treatment plants. Looking at power supply to agri businesses through the power plant upgrading, and so forth. Looking at how you deal with farmer producer associations in organizing them to form co-ops and form business plans, and so forth. So I want to emphasize that AID's programs are integrated across the sector. And agriculture has been a little bit slow to get out of the gate. I think with this new funding and this new emphasis, and so forth, there will be an opportunity to have increased integration as well as build on the lessons learned from the surrounding countries and in other like projects. MR. CHRISTIANSON: Scott Christianson again. Doug, could you elude to another parallel, let's say, that Ed just brought up. He said that you're linking to efforts in Egypt. But I've recently been to Afghanistan. And you're aware of the provincial reconstruction teams that are being used there. I'm sure that the same effort will be used in Iraq because many people think that the whole country is totally insecure. And then leading into this discussion, could you also draw some distinctions between the security in the north, which is rather much better off than in the central and southern portions of the country, perhaps. Will that, is there any distinction that should be drawn between the different parts of the country for security? MR. POOLE: This is a very difficult question, how do we respond to the security. As you see the security has changed from Felluga to Mosul now, and so forth. I think the one thing we want to make sure is that Iraqi counterparts, Iraqi subcontractors, Iraqi advisors, and so forth, as well as the ex pats are completely safe. And until that, we will take all the caution we can until that actually happens. I think there are parallels with the Afghan program. I think that job creation, not only short-term job creation, but long-term job creation is certainly good. You may remember that in October of 2003 we had irrigation cleaning crews that were very effective, lots and lots of jobs created, but only for a short term, maybe six weeks, maybe two months. We're trying to turn that around into longer term projects where people can actually either make a business out of cleaning canals and be supported by municipal governments, but get away from the, transform the short-term jobs into longer term sustainable jobs. I'm sure that the Afghan model will be considered and will be possibly used, and something like the provincial program that you mentioned, or something like the civilian conservation corps as we had in the United States back in the thirties, and so forth, in terms of public works projects. Those were very successful. And possibly Iraq could use something like that also. MR. : [Inaudible.] In Afghanistan, very similar activities are being done in Iraq by the military. We have similar [inaudible], we call them by a different name. And we are working with those and [inaudible] is working with those throughout the country, is a very good source of information and ideas on projects and areas to invest. And certainly there's potential for the types of things that we did in Afghanistan on the short term. We put in a lot of work. We had 11,000 people a day working out there. But as Doug says, it was on a short-term basis. But there's some of that work to be done also in Iraq now that the funding has become available. MR. POOLE: One, too, underlying what Ed said, I had failed to mention earlier that our teams work very much in concert with civil military affairs folks, constant communication with them, not only in Baghdad, but in the field. These are our sources of information. They also know where the producer associations are needing help. So I think this is unlike other development areas wherein the military contractor, USAID, NGO link is very, very tight. And I think we're learning from this. But I would say that the information flow and information exchange has certainly been positive. Any other question you can certainly save for later. Maybe we should move on into the marshlands presentation. Shift a little bit. Let's put up our little props here. Iraq's marshland restoration program was launched in June 2003 when four scientists, Dr. Peter Reese, Dr. Osan Malwash [ph.], Dr. Kurt Richardson, and myself, were able to travel to the marshes of southern Iraq and actually talk to local stake holders, tribesmen, to collect soil samples, to collect water samples, and report those findings to the Ministry of Agriculture--Ministry of Water Resources as well as to the coalition provisional authority and USAID authorities. And from that developed a plan to actually look at possible reflooding and monitoring where we would provide social and economic assistance to the Marsh Arabs, as well as look at modeling and restoration efforts over the long term. Just a little bit of history, maybe just a couple maps here and give you an idea of what's happened. The Iraqi marshlands were originally about 20,000 square kilometers, a little bit larger than the State of West Virginia. That area where the marshes have been continually reflooded at the confluence of the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers. Saddam Hussein in the late eighties and also in the nineties continued to drain those areas. If you look at the map that Christie has, maybe I'll just walk out in front a second, the [inaudible]. Can you hear me? Looking at pictures here from 1973 all the way through to 2000, this is the area in southern Iraq partly going over to the Iranian border, and you can see the areas that have gotten less and less water. Maybe later on you'd like to come up and take a look at this. Saddam had, it looks to me like he had taken an egg beater and actually gone through this area for several years, putting dikes and canals, and so forth, so that it really has messed up the hydrology. You've got the Prosperity River here, it's about two kilometers wide, basically diverted the water from the Tigris that should come down into this area, diverted that water into the Chatalrab [ph.], and actually accelerated the flow of water off this landscape. Let's take that one down. The marshes originally looked like the picture on the right. And today they look like, parts of the area look like the one on the left. You can see the kind of the, you can see the area here where boats used to go through, and so forth. To give you a little bit more background on the Tigris/Euphrates, remember that the Euphrates starts in Turkey, comes down through Syria, ends up down in this area through here, at the Garden of Eden, this is at Querno [ph.]. The Tigris has a little bit of watershed up in Turkey. But what is interesting from this map doesn't show, is that the Turkish area has large areas of irrigation have been developed up there, large areas, as does Syria. Those folks take off large parts of that irrigation water. It means less and less water is coming down here. So besides Saddam actually draining the marshes, there is less water and poorer water quality actually coming down. How much of the marshes can be reflooded, that's still a question. And a question we're trying to answer. I have some maps also on the wall here we can look at later on. The black area here is basically the 20,000 square kilometers of land that was originally under water. It's now down to about 2,500 square kilometers. And there are flooding areas over in here. So tremendous--went from basically 90 to 95 percent of the area has been decimated. To be realistic, I don't think we'll be able to reflood all of the areas. But that's something we're certainly looking at. The area is important ecologically. It is a flyaway for Siberian birds going into Africa. It is important culturally. It has been the home of the Marsh Arabs for centuries. It is important in terms of the hydrology of this whole area. It acts as a huge, huge filter. And is an economic area for about 100,000 people. So summarize a little bit, AID's program was to look at how do we involve the people and what do they want to do in the marshes, to deal with the local Ministry of Water Resources as well as the Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Environment in dealing with socio economic activities. Also looking at the hydrology of the area, how much water is available in the two rivers that can reflood this area. And what kind of economic activities would you like to have to go in this. As you have seen, this is an area that has, that is important culturally, religiously, ecologically, and biologically. And so a lot of the donors have actually wanted to get involved in this, the Japanese, the Italians, the Brits, the Canadians, and others. We have been charged by our administrator to actually help coordinate that effort. And I might ask John Wilson to talk a little bit more about that in the future. Our program has had the main thrust is that we need to deal with the people. We can't just bring on the water and expect economic activities to occur. One thing we found out is that water, what may be good for your rice production may also flood the man below. Remember, a lot of this area has been drained, has been leveled. You can look at a picture back there on the wall. You can see, you can look at some of the salinity because of poor drainage, and so forth, you also have very poor yields of wheat coming out of this area. But the reflooding does not imply that everything is going to be reflooded. There will be selected areas. There has to be some land use capability mapping done. And we'll also look at some tribal conflict resolution of how to deal with certain tribes who actually have been displaced. Remember, this area at one time probably served about a half a million people. The recent surveys we have had that are still ongoing show that we have about 70,000 people and we have a large number of those refugees who were actually forced out of the marshes in the nineties and so forth, those refugees are coming back from Iran and looking for their houses, looking for their livestock, looking for their land. So there's certainly an area that we can certainly look at repopulating this area. The land use in the conflict resolution will certainly be a, certainly an important area that we'll work with. We work with local partners. Right now besides the ministries, we're working with the University of Bosra, the College of Agriculture, the Marine Science Research Center. They are our collaborators. We work with the Iraq Foundation. We work with Duke University and other partners. They have been very loyal in this operation and have helped us be very, very clear with the ministries and the people of what we're doing. I should say in February our team, run by Development Alternatives, prepared us an action plan. That action plan was joined by the Australians. We looked at soil salinity. We looked at fish biology. We looked at reconstructed wetlands, where you're using actually wetlands to help purify and improve water quality. We looked at fish capture. And we looked at primary health care. And the idea was how do we look at these activities and bring them together into a sustainable development plan. We look at the marshes as kind of a microcosm of the rest of the country. And hopefully to bring together the different sectors to work together so that we can help the livelihoods and the standard of living of these people. There are about 70 people on that team. And basically we targeted two areas. One is at the national level. How do you deal with the amount of water coming down the Tigris and Euphrates. We have worked with some hydraulic modeling, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Hydrological Ecological Center out of Davis, California Army Corps of Engineers is providing us data on water flow, periodicity of water, and helping us determine from a trans boundary area, an inter basin area, how much water is actually available to actually reflood the marshes. Further on we want to look at more modeling down in the marshes where you can actually figure out what areas should be flooded and which areas should not be flooded. We're looking at mapping, how to actually map the areas that are reflooded and being able to look at land use capability through geographic information systems. And we hope to develop a database that could be shared with other donors, with other ministries, and with the local tribesmen. We're also equipping a soil and water quality laboratory for the Ministry of Water Resources. And helping them train their people on water quality testing standards. AID, through Development Alternatives, have also supported study tours by staff from the Ministry of Water Resources and will continue to bring them either to the States or other areas where there are marshes and wetlands and looking at sustainable wetlands management policies. We have also looked at a comprehensive donor strategy and looking at different donors, how we can help them point to gaps in the strategic plan and help, have them help us fund that. At the marshlands level, we're dealing, as I said before, with the actual stakeholders and looking at an integrated marshland management plan. We're looking at crop and livestock improvement. One of the successful projects have been establishing date palm nurseries. Date palm sprouts have actually been planted in the marsh areas. They will be distributed to surrounding families. Those families then can make small businesses out of this. The idea is in five or six years come back into date palm production and use that area as such. The other thing is looking at livestock and dairy production, mostly water buffalo. A lot of these families are women headed. The men were killed during the Iraq/Iranian war. And we are targeting training programs for livestock herding, livestock health care practices to women, also providing health care medicines to veterinaries who can actually help improve livestock production in the marshes. A favorite program of our administrator is the fish restocking, looking at the boonie fish. It's a native fish. Remember, as the marshes were drained, a lot of fish stock had been killed. We are actually collecting eggs and will release those and with, hopefully new funding, will be able to increase that so that local fishermen can actually go back and start their businesses and be profitable again. At one time the marshes actually provided the major fish markets in both Bosra and Baghdad. In primary health care, we're looking at actually extending, doing some building, as well as looking at some of the staffing of the health care facilities and trying to beef that up through the Imar [ph.] Foundation, who is actually physically available in the marshes. The constructed wetlands, we have a design for that, very, very simple, and very inexpensive design that could handle household waste from local villages, designs maybe $25,000 or $30,000 taking hector, have hector marshland, using the reed to actually absorb some of those nutrients, let the sludge kind of settle out. And you end up with higher quality water, water quality. This could be repeated throughout the marshes. And this is certainly something with additional funding we could certainly do. In terms of the donors, we're looking at sharing some of the mapping things, some of the products from our hydrologic monitoring. And looking at how the stakeholders have a plan in this. I think that what I should say is that the Ministry of Water Resources Dr. Latif Rashid certainly has looked at water use and planning. It's no use to actually bring water back to the marshes if we don't have a plan to how to deal with water as it comes across from Turkey and from Syria. You have to have--so we are proposing and hope to help the Ministry of Water Resources with a national water master plan and to help him with water allocation, which will then be a feed in to how to manage the marshes on a sustainable basis downstream. This exercise would also help us be a capacity building exercise with the Ministry of Water Resources staff, help them learn how to collect information, establishing gauging streams, engaging equipment in the rivers and so forth, to get better data on the hydrology, the hydra period of the river not only upstream but also downstream. In a nutshell, this is the Iraq program in terms of the marshes. It was funded at $4 million. That funding will end in December of 2005. We're obviously looking for other sources of funding. That's the program as we see it today. If there are questions, comments, I certainly invite that. I invite my colleague, John Wilson, to help us, any comments he might have to cover also. Yes, sir? MR. HOLIHAN: Terry Holihan [ph.], with the Shaw Group. You just mentioned that the funding will run out at the end of this year, this calendar year. Is there any-- MR. POOLE: Actually 2005. MR. HOLIHAN: Oh, 2005, yes. MR. POOLE: Yes. December 2005. MR. HOLIHAN: $4 million. MR. POOLE: Mm-hum. And that's been running since basically June of last year. MR. HOLIHAN: Okay. MR. POOLE: So it's about an 18 month program. MR. HOLIHAN; Are there any trips anticipated with USAID going to Iraq on this subject? And secondly, in the donor situation, what does the funding look like in terms of donors coming up in the next year? MR. POOLE: Good question. Let's take the trips first. You're certainly welcome to come with us when security permits. The office in Bosra is headed by, managed by Iraqis. We don't recommend traveling right now. But you certainly would be welcome to come with us. And it's actually, the press has been there, you've had other independent firms been out there. One thing I did not mention, which is important to underline in the marshes, is this area holds one of the largest unexploited oil reserves in the Middle East. So it will have a lot of attention besides just ecologists, environmentalists, and people doing professional development. There has been exploration there already. But this will certainly will taint what's going to happen in the future. I should say also that we've had study tours with the Ministry of Water Resources. We've taken him to southern Louisiana where there's oil extraction, gas extraction from wetlands there. And they are in talks right now in terms of how that might work. Regarding your question on donors, you should know that the Italians have pledged $11 million right now. They are implementing with USAID. The Iraq Foundation is both a partner on the USAID program through Development Alternatives, as well as a lead on the Italian funding. The Canadians are funding about $3 million I think. The Japanese, another $10 million through the UN. That's the amount of funding that we know. And maybe a little bit through the UK right now. That's kind of in a nutshell where the funding is. John, do you know of others? MR. WILSON: No. MR. STAINS: Okay. Ed Stains [ph.] again. A couple of questions, Doug. One for you, I guess, is the--is AID having any kind of initiative to get the international community to think about coming up with an agreement with water sharing, working with the World Bank, or somebody, to talk with the neighboring countries. Because until you can tie down exactly what resources are going to be available in the future, it's really hard to plan for not only agriculture but also the marshlands. MR. POOLE: We've been quite interested in the trans boundary water sharing situation. This is a delicate and sensitive political issue with both Turkey and Syria. We've been advised by Department of State that if asked and requested by the neighbors, as well as Iraq, we would certainly help them in water sharing agreements. As you're well aware, there are no viable or in place water treaties right now. So that would be one step in having that dialogue. The Ministry of Water Resources has on his own, the Ministry of Water Resources from Iraq, Dr. Latif Rashid, has written letters both to Turkey and Syria and to Iran, wishing a dialogue with them. And as I repeat, our State Department says, if asked, we would certainly be glad to support that effort if requested. MR. STAIN: Second question: The relationships between RD [ph.] and the marshlands, now that we have some funding for the RD, what is your thinking as far as integrating some of those activities or are you going to shift some of the funding from RD to the marshlands or is the marshlands going to continue to develop funding so it's its own identity and not kind of blurred with the RD activities? MR. POOLE: I think that's still being worked out. But obviously, there's overlap there. There is common interest. I think the agriculture and livestock production that's being done on the marshlands can certainly be done under RD, which RD is already doing this across the country. But in terms of sharing what other funding might be available, we don't know at this time. I thank you for--okay. MR. STAIN: One more. Do you have plans, then, for coming up with additional funding for the marshlands to actually implement the planning that has been going on? MR. POOLE: The planning, you know, we've also talked about continued planning including master planning, looking at modeling, continue looking at a strategic plan. As of this moment, there is no more additional funding. We are certainly looking for that, hoping that there could be some funding available so that this effort could continue. In the meantime, we're working very closely with the other donors, and as well with the Ministry of Water Resources, on can we use, could we use some of their funding to help direct this to a national master plan. The idea is coordination and open flow of communication with our donors as well as with the Iraqi Government. Thank you very much for your attention this morning. And I look forward to your comments and further contributions. Thank you. [END OF TAPED RECORDING.] - - -Further information: |
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