December 19, 2021
By Golnar Motevalli
Experts (click here) fear a long drought could jeopardise the recovery of Lake Urmia
It was a gushing river (click here) that turned the ancient town of Esfahan into a cultural paragon that twice served as capital of the Persian Empire. But today, as it trickles through Iran, the Zayandeh Rud is a dried up battleground.
Thousands of Iranians flooded the barren riverbed last month to protest against the state’s management of water resources during the worst drought in decades. Social media videos showed baton-wielding security forces step in to quell the crowd, leaving some with bloodied faces, including a middle-aged woman cloaked in a black chador.
This is exactly what the danger is for civilization. People will protest the lack of water and in reaction to the protests there will be government oppression that will result in prison and quite possibly excutions to uphold policy.
Deadly clashes also took place this summer in the province of Khuzestan, 180 miles away, where decades of oil exploitation has drained wetlands and destroyed once-fertile soil.
Iran’s Water Crisis
Shortages have destroyed farms and limited drinking water in affected cities and provinces...
This is the way it works. There will be deluges of rain at one end of a region and drought at the other. It is just as immoral in Iran as anywhere else on Earth to abuse the planet and cause problems that are not easily reversed.
February 25, 2021
By Peter Schwartzstein
It was the slow lengthening (click here) of the boat pier that Solmaz Daryani remembers as the most obvious sign that something was amiss.
Until the late 1990s, her family's hotel stood steps away from Lake Urmia's northern shoreline. Bit by bit, though, the waters began to retreat. At first, her uncle extended the pier 100 metres (330ft) out to facilitate guests' access to his boats. The next year, he built it out twice as far. Eventually, with the lake retreating at record speed, he had to admit defeat.
"At some point he just had to stop extending it. The lake was moving 500 metres [1,640ft] a year," says Daryani, a photographer who has spent much of the past few years documenting what has become of the lake. "Ultimately, people would have had to walk right to the middle."...
