Environmental Turmoil in Iran
Ahvaz, the capital of Khuzestan province, was Iran’s most polluted city on Monday and among the most polluted cities in the world.
According to domestic news agencies and based on announcements from the World Air Quality Index Project website, on Monday the level of pollution caused by dust particles in Ahvaz reached dangerous levels, following which more than 430 Ahvaz residents with acute respiratory problems were taken to hospitals.
Last week, dust had also turned this city into the most polluted city in the world.
Nik Ahang Kawthar, a geologist and water journalist, said in an exclusive interview with a Voice of America correspondent about this environmental problem: “The root of a significant portion of this dust is due to the drying of land surfaces in neighboring countries and also on Iran’s central plateau.”
He considered the drying of Hawizeh Marsh as one of the reasons for dust storms in Khuzestan province and western regions of Iran and added: “The reduction in soil surface moisture and water scarcity in Iran’s neighboring countries due to Turkey’s policies and dam construction on the branches of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers has caused the destruction of agriculture and the migration of farmers in Iraq and Syria. This same factor has caused dust phenomena over the past few decades and created many problems for the Iranian people.”
Simultaneously, the first vice president under Ibrahim Raisi said in a meeting of the National Coordination and Management Headquarters for Wetlands: “All people should benefit from wetlands, but now the country’s wetlands are facing desiccation and if necessary measures are not taken to preserve, restore and develop them, we must answer to God and the people.”
This is while the interior minister of Ibrahim Raisi’s administration broke ground on the construction of a petrochemical complex near Miankaleh Wetland earlier this year, a project that has become a point of contention between environmental activists and largely government supporters of the project.
Meanwhile, the Tabnack website, close to Mohsen Rezaei, the economic deputy of the head of government, also announced that Shilat Wetland in the city of Astara is on the verge of destruction. According to this report, the influx of domestic wastewater, various types of waste, and invasive plants have endangered the existence of the country’s only wetland within a northern city.
