 The word Iraq brings to the minds of many pictures of deserts, of oil, of war, of Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction. The word Iraq brings to me pictures of snow-capped mountains, majestic valleys, feeding their waters and the Titigris and Euphrates, which then go to this Eden, this wetland in the middle of the barren desert. The Mesopotamian marshlands are the cradle of civilization. In the middle of these marshes live a people called M'udan, Marsh Arabs. Their way of life is no different than the way of life of the Sumerians who invented agriculture, irrigation, the wheel, the writing, and it is, in fact, where Abraham was born. So it is without irony that I call the marshes the cradle of civilization, not only I, but a few others do too. Here is a picture of the marshes in 1973, it's a false-colored picture, and it shows the marshes in my youth, in their glory days. Heat forests still I can see, lakes full of fish, birds flying in the sky, water buffalo roaming in peace. And here is a picture of the marshes in 1997, as barren as the desert surrounded it. What happened? Well, ladies and gentlemen, this is the evidence of weapons of mass destruction, the lack of water and the use of it to kill an ecosystem. As a result of the drying of the marshes, the place that looked like this in my youth end up looking like this in 2003. Well, before 2003, people said or experts said that the marshes cannot be restored because the seed bank is dead, it's old, furthermore, the marsh Arabs don't want to go back to this lifestyle. Well, I'm happy to report to you not only did the marsh Arabs come back and bleach the dykes and return the water to the marshes, but the marshes, the experts just don't give nature the respect it deserves. Nature can heal herself. Within six months of water coming back to these marshes, the reed forest of my youth came back and the marsh Arabs came back to resume their way of life and the birds came back to the density that I remember in my youth. This is a story seldom told. It is one of the unique points where, in fact, water results in massive economic and environmental restoration. So are the marshes going to be there for our grandchildren? Nothing in life is constant. The only constant is change. Here is a hydrograph that shows you the peaks, the floods that made agriculture sustainable in Iraq for 7,000 years. Every year we have a new flood that comes in and renews life. Well, as of 1980, as of 1975, you see that the attenuation has reduced and in fact we now have no floods. What we have is constant stream of water that is reducing in quality, increasing in salinity. And that, the reason for that is because dams are being built upstream in Iraq and Syria and Turkey and Iran. Rivers, you see, don't understand boundaries. We have to manage this place together. I stand here with you in the land of the Arab Spring. I will call for another revolution. I'll call for a blue revolution. An era where Turkey, Iraq and Iran and Syria need to work together across boundaries to manage the water resources of the Tigris and Euphrates, to share, to start talking to each other. And yes, I know you're all shaking your heads. That's impossible. Just like the experts were wrong in predicting that the marshes cannot be restored, I stand here and telling you, if there is a will, there's a way. This is our way to the future. We have to work together to live in harmony with nature and with each other. Thank you.