The drought in Syria – now in its fourth year – is affecting an estimated 1.3 million people. More than 800,000 of them have lost their livelihoods and around 300,000 farmers, herders, and their families have abandoned their homes for makeshift urban camps, the Christian Science Monitor reports.

In southern Iraq, it’s a similar story, the National says:

The ecosystem in Faw, on the Shatt al Arab waterway, has been badly damaged by rapid increases in salinity, a side-effect of reduced water levels in the Euphrates and Tigris rivers.

According to villagers, the Faw region has become all but uninhabitable. Scores of families have already abandoned their homes …

Water is a major cause for concern across Iraq. A three-year-long drought has added to fears that damage to the water table and environment may already be so severe that full recovery will be impossible.

The Iraqi government has blamed most of the problems on reduced water flows entering from Syria and Turkey, where the Tigris and Euphrates are heavily dammed … As the quantity of fresh water flowing downstream has dropped, tidal salt-water backflows from the Gulf have increased, poisoning once productive farmlands.

While most attention has focused on the role of Turkey and Syria in the water cutbacks, Iran has also been diverting growing amounts of water that once flowed into Iraq, according to senior Iraqi water officials.

The name "Euphrates" is Greek for "the good and abounding river", but today the water's flow has been reduced to a fraction of what it once was. The problems began in the 1960s when Turkey began building a series of dams on the Euphrates, to generate electricity and increase the amount of farmland in what is known as the south-eastern Anatolia project (Gap). Since then, other demands on the waters, further downstream, have exacerbated the problem.

Last week, Turkey agreed to allow more water through into Iraq, under a deal that will last only one month.