During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Ottoman government devoted considerable resources to expanding irrigation networks and improving flood control in the southern portions of the Tigris-Euphrates valley as part of a broader attempt to exert government authority and improve agricultural productivity. In pursuit of those goals, Ottoman authorities frequently invoked narratives of ecological decline that blamed the Mongol invasions and Arab tribal groups for widespread aridity and disastrous flooding in the region. Such narratives constitute an "environmental imaginary" of Iraq. Scholars have examined how such narratives served European interests in Iraq both during and after the Ottoman period. Yet, Ottoman environmental imaginings of their own territory have not been adequately explored with regards to the ways in which they served Ottoman interests in Iraq during the late Ottoman period. Nor have such narratives been explored for the ways in which they aligned with actual environmental challenges specific to the Iraq region. By focusing on these narratives during the Tanzimat, Hamidian, and Young Turk periods, this paper highlights important continuities and changes in the ways in which Ottoman authorities used narratives of ecological decline in pursuit of their administrative goals in Iraq.