Over 57,000 villages across Iran, comprising the total rural population, are connected to the national power grid.
According to the Energy Ministry news portal Paven, while rural electrification rate in the world is 76% (based on United Nations data), the figure is 100% in Iran.
An estimated 21 million rural folks, or nearly 26%, of the total population, are now connected to the national grid.
Length of the national power distribution network stretches over 800,000 kilometers, of which 250,000 km supplies electricity to underdeveloped rural communities. This is while 100% of the urban population is linked to the grid that has been in expansion phase for nearly three decades.
According to the International Energy Agency, lack of access to energy, and more precisely to electricity, is one of the major impediments to economic development.
Experts say electricity alone cannot create all the conditions for economic wellbeing, but remains crucial for economic growth as a pre-requisite for manufactures and the key agro sector.
Despite progress in global electrification rates, 1.1 billion people are still deprived of electricity. Approximately 87% of the people without electricity live in rural areas characterized by remoteness and sparse population density, where the extension of national grids is often technically difficult, costly and economically unviable, especially in the poor countries.
Official data in other countries, like India, show only 1,417 of India’s 18,452 villages, or 7.3% of the total, have 100% household connectivity and an estimated 31 million homes are still in the dark.
Water Supply
Iran’s total urban population has access to piped water and about 29,000 villages with 17 million people, that is almost 81% of total rural population, have access to potable water.
Fresh water is provided to the suburbs and underprivileged regions via 184,000 km of distribution network.
Supplying rural areas with clean water is among the main priorities of the Energy Ministry.
Despite major projects which have been undetaken in the past decade, a fifth of the rural population is still deprived of fresh water. That is why thousands of villages have been depopulated partly due to drought over half a century that saw unusually large numbers of people migrate to cities in search of a livelihood as water became a precious commodity and economic conditions deteriorated.
Access to safe drinking water is a major concern in the world. Health risks arise from consumption of water contaminated with pollutants or harmful chemicals that can transmit diseases such as diarrhea, cholera, dysentery, typhoid and polio.
Safe and readily available water is important for public health, whether it is used for drinking, domestic use, food production or recreation.
Although food security has significantly increased in the past 30 years, global water withdrawals for irrigation represent 66% of the total withdrawals and up to 90% in arid regions, the other 34% being used by households (10%), industry (20%), and evaporated from reservoirs (4%).
As the per capita use increases due to changes in lifestyle and as populations increase, the share of water for human use is also on the rise. This, coupled with spatial and temporal variations in water availability, means that water to produce food for human consumption, industrial processes and all the other uses is becoming scarce across continents.
Enhanced water supply and sanitation and better water management can help improve economic growth and curb disturbing trends in rural migration.
