Lakes become deserts, Iran to fight drought

Prothom Alo via AFP: Nazar Sarani's village in southeast Iran was once an island. It is now a desert, a casualty of the country's worsening water crisis. "We live in the dust," said the 54-year-old cattle herder of his home in the once exceptional biosphere of Lake Hamoun, a wetland of varied flora and fauna, which is now nothing but sand-baked earth.

Climate change, with less rainfall each year, is blamed, but so too is human error and government mismanagement. Iran's reservoirs are only 40 percent full according to official figures, and nine cities including the capital Tehran are threatened with water restrictions after dry winters.

The situation is more critical in Sistan-Baluchistan, the most dangerous area in Iran, where a Sunni minority is centred in towns and villages that border Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Only 15 years ago, Hamoun was the seventh largest wetland in the world, straddling 4,000 square kilometres (1,600 square miles) between Iran and Afghanistan, with water rolling in from the latter's Helmand river.

But with dams since built in Afghanistan as well as other blocked pathways holding back the source of Hamoun's diversity, the local economy has collapsed. ... A study in 2013 by the World Resources Institute ranked Iran as the world's 24th most water-stressed nation, with public consumption around twice the world average.

Government subsidies on water do nothing to encourage efficiency, and public education messages on television and radio are ignored. Agricultural use -- for water-heavy crops such as rice and corn -- is thought to eat up nearly 90 percent of national supply, with experts saying irrigation is poorly managed, resulting in high wastage...

A desert village in Iran, shot by Jeanne Menj Jeanne Menj, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons 2.0 Generic license