Iran records the "lowest" rainfall in the last 50 years
A senior official at the Ministry of Energy says that this solar year has seen the lowest rainfall in the past half a century in Iran. The Forests and Rangelands Organization has also said that 355 of the country's 600 plains are "waterless."
Rahim Maydani, Deputy Minister of Water and Wastewater Affairs at the Ministry of Energy, warned on January 14 about a decrease in rainfall in 2017. Mr. Maydani says that the water entering the main dams in Iran this year has been 30 percent less than during the same period last year.
From Mr. Maydani's statements, it appears that this year's rainfall is much less than the Meteorological Organization's initial predictions.
In addition, in some watersheds such as the Persian Gulf, rainfall has decreased by 67 percent, and in some provinces where "good rainfall was expected," rainfall has also decreased by between 40 and 75 percent.
As Iran's Deputy Minister of Energy stated in his remarks on Sunday, "the precipitation situation has been normal only in the provinces of Ardabil and Golestan."
At the same time, a senior official from Iran's Forests, Rangelands and Watershed Management Organization has also warned about "the destruction of water-conserving resources" and "increasing water shortage problems."
On January 14, in a briefing, Negahdar Eskandari Shiri said, "The rate of groundwater depletion in the country due to excessive extraction has been about six billion cubic meters per year." According to Mr. Eskandari Shiri, "This trend has caused concern among many experts in the field of water and soil."
The comments come just days after Tehran's governor warned of a shortage of drinking water in the capital. Last Thursday, Issa Farhadi made similar remarks to the Energy Ministry official, saying that Tehran had the lowest water levels recorded in the past five decades.
Experts, analysts, and a number of government officials have warned in recent years about the crisis caused by drought and water shortages. At the same time, reports have also been published about the funding needed to deal with this crisis. For example, on January 29, Tabnak News Agency, referring to the government’s “withdrawal of $5 billion” from the foreign exchange reserve fund in 2008 to deal with the consequences of the drought, said that the current government “has difficulty securing even much smaller amounts.”
In addition, there has been criticism about the allocation of budget to other issues. After the publication of the details of the 2018 budget, campaigns were formed in cyberspace under the title "Change the budget for the benefit of the people." Some of these campaigns have called for budget cuts for seminaries, the Iranian Broadcasting Corporation, and military institutions.
Drought and its consequences in Iran have also been accompanied by citizen and civil protests. Last week, the scientific journal Scientific American, in an analysis, said that the consequences of climate change, drought, or mismanagement are among the important challenges that Iran is facing. According to the journal, this crisis may be one of the reasons for the recent protests in Iran and may lead to other protests in the coming years.
Source: Radio Farda
