As long as old paradigms like allocating diminishing groundwater resources to water-intensive steel mills and thermal power plants in the middle of the desert are not replaced with new and workable methods like integrated water resource management and spatial planning, the shortage of this vital resource will get worse before getting better, a board member of the privately-owned Iran Water Industry Federation said.
"The current manmade disaster in Iran has evolved over time and solely due to mismanagement and absence of long-term planning," Reza Hajikarim was also quoted as saying by ILNA.
While the drought has created a challenging environment, the reasons for Iran's water crisis go deeper.
The official noted that the main concern is no longer to prevent wetlands and lakes from drying up, but to supply potable water to millions of city-dwellers in Shahr-e Kord, Hamedan, Mashhad, Gilan and Tehran.
“The existing situation has nothing to do with low precipitation, as drought has been a norm in Iran for a long time because it is located in an arid region,” he said, adding that despite all warnings issued by domestic and international research institutes, policymakers insist on pursuing poor strategies that have been in practice over the last four decades.
“We have caused the catastrophe and expect it to be averted by miracles, which has so far proved to be in vain. Other nations have also faced the same predicament, but have never blamed the weather conditions, nor have they pinned hope on divine bounties.”
Referring to the Netherlands as an example, he noted that the country is experiencing the worst drought not seen in half a century, but their officials have managed the crisis effectively with the help of modern methods, including IWRM and spatial planning.
IWRM is a process that promotes the coordinated development and management of water, land and related resources, in order to maximize the resultant economic and social welfare in an equitable manner without compromising the sustainability of the vital ecosystems.
Water Management Illiteracy
Hajikarim believes that Iran is long suffering from water management illiteracy because fundamental concepts like spatial planning and IWRM – critical for sustainable development – are absent in long-term planning.
Spatial planning, also referred to as land-use planning, is a fundamental concept for sustainable development that rests on the principle that the current needs should be met without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
Drawing a parallel between the current situation in some plains of Iran and California in the US, he said before the area could reach a critical point, American water officials started to modify agricultural patterns and the cultivation of water-intensive crops were totally prohibited to minimize water extraction from underground tables.
They started to tap into treated wastewater resources not only to irrigate their farms but also to provide piped water for citizens.
Hajikarim said none of these practical approaches has ever been adopted in Iran so far and to add salt to injury, the dry plains have been sold to steelmakers, which need much more water than farming.
Iran suffers from one of the worst groundwater depletion rates in the world, alongside India, United States, Saudi Arabia and China.
According to the official, land subsidence is not just a hazardous geographical phenomenon, but a major security issue, as it can damage all infrastructural facilities, such as highways, airports, bridges and hospitals.
Crisis Level
Hajikarim stressed that the country’s water scarcity will hit crisis level by 2025, when renewable water will be less than 1,000 cubic meters per capita, down from 2,000 cubic meters in 1950.
The push for national self-sufficiency in food has led to farmers using up larger quantities of groundwater.
Pumping out groundwater at a faster rate than it is replenished has increased the level of salt in soil, which can in turn affect soil fertility in food-producing regions.
There is a very high salinity hazard for irrigation water in many areas, namely Khuzestan, according to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Digging deeper for groundwater has brought the threat of land subsidence, as cities like Isfahan are literally sinking.
There is also concern about the drying up of wetland areas and rivers, which can trigger dangerous dust storms.
Lake Urmia, once one of the world's largest saltwater lakes, has become another symbol of manmade disaster.
To feed rapid agricultural expansion in the area and in the middle of drought in the 1990s, farmers resorted to pumping out groundwater and building numerous dams due to which the lake is 80% dry.
