JOIN IT ! : The Tigris River Flotilla – Follow the Flotilla
Mission : The Tigris River Flotilla is a project of Nature Iraq and that seeks to nurture the natural and cultural heritage of Mesopotamia, the land between the Euphrates and Tigris. The Flotilla trip has several complementary goals.
First, we seek to achieve greater awareness in local communities in Turkey and Iraq about the threats to the Tigris River, and help call global attention to this one-of-a-kind ecology. We will do this through riverside community outreach and presentations, local media interviews, and through a blog that will catalogue and explain the journey to the greater global community. Additionally, by building and using traditional boats – including a tarada, a guffa, and a kelek – we will celebrate the history, culture, and ingenuity of Mesopotamia. Second, we will collect data on the ecology of the Tigris and the overall condition of the river. Nature Iraq staff, particularly staff from the Waterkeepers Iraq program who are trained in water quality testing and threat assessment, will collect water samples and catalog threats over the course of the trip. We will also partner with academic institutions in both Iraq and Turkey to build a regional partnership of academics on water issues.
Lastly, we will seek to create a stronger voice and network for communities by identifying community liaisons who can serve as a representative for their local watershed as well as building a website for future networking and engaging in direct actions, like river cleanups, throughout the trip.
As an overall result, we will raise awareness both internationally and in stakeholder communities about threats to the Tigris itself and to the cultural and environmental resources of Mesopotamia. We will establish, grow, and maintain a community of interested and affected parties to continually monitor the river and its tributaries. Ultimately, we will advocate for more sustainable use of this river, just as important to today’s Mesopotamians as it was to the Sumerians, the Assyrians, the Abbasids, and the Ottomans before us.