Robert Lawrence France (ed): Wetlands of mass destruction. Ancient presage for contemporary ecocide in southern Iraq Green Frigate Books, Sheffield, Vermont, USA, 2007,ISBN 0971746834, 195 pages

摘要

Mesopotamia is well known as one of the areas where intensive irrigated agriculture provided the food for early cities to develop. As people diverted river water to the land to grow food crops, populations became denser, and politics, arts, and culture thrived. Less well known perhaps is the fact that in the downstream region of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, what is today southern Iraq, an extensive wetland provided the resources for the development of a large community near or in the marshes. This region received unfortunate attention in the early 1990s, when in an attempt to defeat opposition to his rule, Sadam Hussein ordered the marshes to be drained. Currently, a large-scale restoration project by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) called "Support for Environmental Management of the Iraqi Marshland" is attempting to restore the wetlands and develop the necessary management procedures.