Eastern Mediterranean faces worst drought in decades, war-torn Syria among hardest hit

A severe drought — the worst seen in decades — is sweeping across the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, drying up rivers and lakes, stunting crop growth, and triggering multi-day water cuts in major urban areas.

The crisis is especially acute in Syria, where diminishing rainfall has been a long-term trend. The country, still reeling from a 14-year civil war, is grappling to rebuild, with much of its population living in poverty and dependent on international aid.

Small-scale farmer Mansour Mahmoud al-Khatib recalled that during the conflict, access to his farmland in Sayyida Zeinab, near Damascus, was often blocked by Hezbollah fighters aligned with then-President Bashar Assad. That obstacle disappeared when Hezbollah withdrew after Assad was ousted during a rebel offensive in December. However, al-Khatib's farm is now suffering from a different kind of hardship: the drought has left his irrigation wells bone dry.

“The land is missing the water,” al-Khatib told The Associated Press, observing as his workers fed the sparse wheat harvest into a threshing machine. “This season is weak — you could call it half a season. Some years are better and some years are worse, but this year is harsh.”

In productive years, al-Khatib's land yielded between 800 and 900 kilograms of wheat per dunam (0.1 hectares or roughly 0.25 acres). This season, however, his output dropped to just a quarter of that. He could only afford to employ six or seven workers, down from 15 the previous year.

Syria’s crop yields continue to decline

Jalal Al Hamoud, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s national food security officer in Syria, noted that the combination of drought and the war’s long-term economic toll has left many farmers with no means to manage the current crisis.

Before the 2011 uprising that spiralled into civil war, Syrian farms produced an estimated 3.5 to 4.5 million tonnes of wheat annually—enough to meet domestic needs. Saeed Ibrahim, director of agricultural planning and economics at Syria’s Agriculture Ministry, said yields dropped to between 2.2 and 2.6 million tonnes during the conflict. More recently, the country has had to import between 60 per cent and 70 per cent of its wheat supply to feed its population of around 23 million.

This year’s harvest is forecast to deliver only one million tonnes, deepening Syria’s reliance on costly imports.

Mudar Dayoub, spokesperson for the Ministry of Internal Trade and Consumer Protection, confirmed that the 2025 wheat crop will last just two to three months. The government, he said, is "currently relying on signing contracts to import wheat from abroad" as well as donations, including from neighbouring Iraq.

However, with the World Food Programme estimating that half the Syrian population is food-insecure, Ibrahim warned that “total reliance on imports and aid threatens food security” and is “unsustainable.”

The drought adds to a host of other challenges Syria faces. Rebuilding after the war is expected to cost hundreds of billions, while recurring sectarian violence raises concerns about the country’s future stability. With few jobs and no guarantees of safety, many refugees remain hesitant to return.

Regional ripple effects

In neighbouring Lebanon, the drought is also having a severe impact. Lake Qaraoun, a reservoir created by a dam on the Litani River in the fertile Bekaa Valley, has shrunk dramatically due to an unusually dry winter and lack of snowmelt.

Sami Alawieh, head of the Litani River National Authority, said climate change has gradually reduced the water flow into the reservoir over the years. While the lake typically receives around 350 million cubic metres of water each rainy season—enough to meet a third of Lebanon’s yearly water demand—this year’s intake didn’t exceed 45 million cubic metres.

Lebanon’s dwindling water supply has also worsened conditions in Syria, where some rivers originate in or flow from Lebanese territory.

The Orontes River—known locally as the Assi—is the largest of these. It runs through Idlib province in Syria, supporting both farming and fishing communities. This year, stretches of the riverbed have dried up completely, with dead fish strewn along the cracked soil.

“This is the first time it's happened that there was no water at all,” said Dureid Haj Salah, a farmer in Jisour al-Shugour, Idlib. Many cannot afford to dig wells for irrigation, and the drought has wiped out summer crops and even mature trees in orchards, he said.

“There is no compensation for the loss of crops," Haj Salah added. "And you know the farmers make just enough to get by."

Mostafa Summaq, director of water resources in Idlib, reported a drop of more than 10 metres in groundwater levels in some monitoring wells over a three-month period. He attributed this to excessive pumping due to the lack of rainfall. While officials are considering introducing metered irrigation systems, such measures would be too costly to implement without external funding.

Facing a drier future

Experts overwhelmingly agree that the region is headed for increasingly severe climate shocks—ones that current infrastructure and policy are ill-equipped to handle.

“Climate change makes some regions wetter and others drier,” said Matti Kummu, a professor at Aalto University in Finland who specialises in global food and water systems. “The Middle East and Mediterranean are among those that are drying out.”

Syria, in particular, has seen a significant decline in rainfall over the past four decades while consuming water at unsustainable levels.

“There's not enough water from rainfall or from snowmelt in the mountains to recharge the groundwater,” Kummu said. As irrigation demands rise, "the groundwater table is going lower and lower, which means that it's less accessible and requires more energy (to pump)." Eventually, he warned, these reserves could be depleted.

Despite limited resources, Kummu believes some mitigation is possible. Measures such as harvesting rainwater, shifting to drought-resistant crops, and introducing more efficient—if simple—irrigation systems could help.

Still, the long-term outlook remains uncertain. “In the long term, if the situation in terms of the climate change impacts continues" as forecast, Kummu said, how much of Syria’s agricultural land will remain farmable is an open question.