Supply-Oriented Policies Cannot Help Resolve Iran’s Water Crisis

Developing infrastructures to divert water from locations where it is abundant to locations facing a shortage is an unsustainable supply-oriented management policy and can do very little to ease the growing water crisis, an Iranian professor at the Concordia University, Quebec, Canada, said.
“Water diversion schemes are ill-conceived, as they not only don’t help fight drought but they also raise consumption and encourage the locals in dry regions to expand water-intensive industries and continue their inefficient farming practices,” Ali Nazemi also told ILNA.
No matter how much water is desalinated, or can be transferred from the Persian Gulf to arid areas in Yazd and Kerman provinces, as long as water demand is not managed efficiently, other strategies on the supply side, including inter-basin transfer to far-flung regions, will not yield the desired result, he added.