Iran considers new plan in water management to tackle resource scarcity

Iran's Energy Minister Hamid Chitchian said Monday that a plan is under consideration to reduce water supplies to farms and industrial plants and to divert it to the urban sector, Press TV reported.

"Water allocation plan" is meant to address "the lack of enough water supplies in the country," Chitchian was quoted as saying.

Iran needed to change the laws to improve the efficiency of water consumption management across the country, he said, adding that this is specifically necessary to help confront the new legal challenges that have emerged over water consumption issues.

"The new laws should resolve the disputes between the upstream and the downstream sectors of the water industry and should protect the interests of the present and the future generations among other issues," Chitchian said.

The Iranian minister warned that Iran's recoverable water resources have declined from 130 billion cubic meters to 90 over the past years, which is a decline of about 45 percent.

The decline in water supplies of Iran is not only a result of lower rainfalls, but other factors like the climate change and population growth are also involved, he pointed out.

Earlier, Chitchian raised concerns that more than 500 cities of the country are struggling with the shortage of drinking water.

According to a Tasnim news agency report on Wednesday, the average rainfalls in the country dropped this autumn by 74 percent compared to last year.

This was the highest drop the country had seen for the past 47 years, the report said.

A recent study by the World Resources Institute has ranked Iran as the world's 24th most water-stressed nation, putting it at extremely high risk of future water scarcity. Endit