The Islamic Republic of Iran is likely to face a water crisis in the coming years, as per the Deputy Head of Iran’s ABFA Organization, Alireza Daemi.
The research that goes behind this statement has shown that water precipitation has gone down by 75% in most of the regions across Iran, and this has led to destructive droughts. Alireza expressed concern about the efforts taken by the Ministry of Power in Iran to deliver water to the drought hit areas, in a seminar he addressed sometime in December.
The major problem is that the main hubs in Iran, or the strategic places which are the backbone of Iran’s economy, have started getting affected due to the drought. A major chunk of Iranian citizens have been residing in these drought hit regions and have been facing problems continuously. Due to this, the Government of Iran has to bear the brunt as the cost of supplying water to drought-hit regions would be very high.
But Iran has its own plan to overcome the water crisis by following the methods used by Asian and Middle Eastern countries. Several international bodies are of the prediction that there might be a new war emerging in South Asian and Middle Eastern countries over the sharing of water resources. Alireza Daemi says that there must a consensus among various countries so that they would be able to share water optimally.
The government has kick-started other projects that enables them to transfer water from the oceans and seas around Iran so that they would be able to provide water to the dry states and cities in Iran. One such project that is being carried out is the transfer of water from the Persian Gulf to the province of Fars. It has been allocated a massive budget of $400 million.
Also, the major drawback for Iran is that the eastern and central basins are dry, which have an annual rainfall of lesser than 200mm of rainfall, making them have a terrain like that of a desert.