How Environmental Damage Fueled Iran’s Protests

Some Iranians blame the government for deteriorating water infrastructure, over-pumped aquifers, and badly designed irrigation systems. In a statement, student activists said that crises have piled up including poverty, inequality, gender oppression, and water and environmental disasters.

For six years, there has been drought in Iran, leading to a water crisis. The president warned last November that residents of Tehran would have to evacuate because there might not be enough water to drink. As InsideClimate News reports, about 400 miles away, Lake Urmia, a huge salt lake is now less than ten percent of its normal volume and wildfires have burned parts of a UNESCO World Heritage site, the Hyrcanian Forests.

Eric Lob, a professor at Florida International University told InsideClimate News that water shortages have left Iranians worried about whether they will have enough for bathing, cleaning, and drinking. He said that tens of thousands die prematurely every year from severe air and water pollution. He added that since the 1979 revolution, the government has developed rural water projects that gave rise to a “water mafia” within the military, with their goal being power and profit over environmental protection and stability.

Drought caused by climate change has resulted in the land subsiding in places to the point that roads and buildings are cracking. Reservoirs are below capacity and wetlands have dried up because of over-consumption of groundwater. Every year, about 250,000 acres of agricultural land is at risk of becoming desert.

To make conditions even tougher, Euronews reports that air pollution in Iranian cities is getting worse because of the need for industry and households to burn a heavy fuel oil called mazut and also from dust blowing off of drying lakes and wetlands.  

The Arizona Republic reports that the invitation comes from Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum after representatives of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and California met recently in Salt Lake City without coming to an understanding.

The states have been trying for more than two years to negotiate a plan to conserve enough water so that Lakes Powell and Mead—the two largest reservoirs in the U.S.—can continue to produce hydropower and supply downstream populations and farms in California, Nevada, Arizona, and Mexico.

About ten days ago, the Interior Department released a draft Environmental Impact Statement—1,600 pages in length—that discussed five alternative plans for dealing with scarcity affecting agriculture for the entire country and about 40 million people. Scott Cameron, acting commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, said in a press release that they expect any agreement among the seven states will incorporate parts or variations of the five alternatives for managing the river’s water.

As the negotiations continue, it is looking like the amount of water in the river is going to be far below normal for the second year in a row. Snowpack is at about 72 percent of normal for the Upper Colorado River Basin.

Glacial ice stores atmospheres of the past, telling the story of particles of dust and minerals that were present at the time—information that, once lost, could never be recovered. The sanctuary is an ice cave around 115 feet long and sits nearly 20 feet below the surface where the cores will remain chilled at around -52°C/-61°F year round without need for refrigeration.

The initial ice cores for the sanctuary were extracted from Mont Blanc in France and Grand Combin in Switzerland and traveled by icebreaker and plane to Concordia Station, a remote Franco-Italian research base in Antarctica. Eventually, endangered ice cores from the Andes, Svalbard, the Alps, the Caucasus, and the Pamir Mountains in Tajikistan will call the sanctuary home. 

According to the World Meteorological Organization, since 1975, glaciers have lost more than 9,000 billion tonnes of ice—the equivalent of an ice block the size of Germany, 25 metres thick. Every year, 273 billion tonnes of ice are lost —an amount equal to 30 years of global human water consumption. This loss disrupts river flows, food production, and ecosystems. It threatens cultural heritage and, ultimately, human security. 

The Ice Memory Foundation, a consortium of European research institutes oversaw the development of the vault. Over the coming decade—designated as the UN Decade of Action for the Cryospheric Sciences—an international governance framework will be established to ensure that samples with their unique information remain accessible as a common lasting legacy for humanity. 

Officially known as the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) Agreement, the UN treaty covers ocean zones that lie beyond national waters and international seabed areas so they are managed sustainably for the benefit of all humanity.

The agreement was designed to address the so-called “triple planetary crisis” of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution. It will allow for the designation of marine protected areas (MPAs) in the high seas and regulate the exploitation of marine genetic resources, which could be the sources for new biomedical breakthroughs. The agreement mandates that countries carry out assessments to determine if activities such as fishing or mining might harm marine environments in international waters.

The High Seas Treaty builds on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea—in effect the “constitution for the oceans,” which has set the rules for maritime and seabed exploitation and marine protection since it came into force in 1994.