A documentary on drought in a village in Khorasan Razavi Province will be shown at the 12th International Traveling Film Festival on Water in Bangalore, India.
Titled “Death of Kariz,” the movie is written and directed by Abbas Heidari. It tells the story of water shortages, drought, rapidly disappearing underground water tables and degradation of the complementary water supply system known as kariz in Now Deh-e Gonabad village in rural district of Gonabad County in Khorasan Razavi Province, IRNA reported on its Persian website.
The Indian festival will screen 229 films on water-related issues from 60 countries on October 17.
Death of Kariz was also screened at the 21st International Ecological Film Festival “To Save and Preserve,” in Khanty-Mansiysk, a town and the administrative center of Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, Russia. The international event seeks to attract public attention to the worsening ecological problems and climate change issues across continents. More than 400 films from 53 countries attended the festival, June 3-8.
Iran is facing its harshest drought in the past 50 years, and nearly half of the country’s population will soon face severe water deficits as the water crisis worsens and no workable solution is in place.
“A total of 334 cities with 35 million people across the country are struggling with the water crisis,” Energy Minister Reza Ardakanian said in April.
Many provinces, including Kerman, South Khorasan and Sistan and Baluchestan, are experiencing up to 70% decline in precipitation.
The expansion of industries and growth in population, have exceeded the development of water management technologies, leading to desiccation of wetlands and rivers.
Illegal water wells, which number 170,000, have emerged as a major problem for the water authorities across the country trying to curb the high extraction and consumption rates, namely in the key agricultural regions.
More than 90% of the country’s water resources are used up by unsustainable and wasteful farming practices.
In addition, per capita water use in metropolises such as Tehran and Isfahan exceeds 200 liters, whereas the global average is around 150 liters.
But, as is always mentioned by independent experts and academia, it is not only high consumption that has created the water disaster. Mismanagement of water resources, including multiple damming projects on major rivers, both in Iran and the neighboring countries, have made a bad situation worse by altering the natural water flow.
Experts predict that the country’s water scarcity will hit crisis level by 2025, when available renewable water will be less than 1,000 cubic meters per capita, down from 2,000 cubic meters in 1950.
