Water Shortages Hit The Middle East

The Middle East is running out of water, and parts of it are becoming uninhabitable

Strange Sounds

The ferries that once shuttled tourists to and from the little islets in Iran’s Lake Urmia sit rusty, unable to move, on what is rapidly becoming a salt plain.

Just two decades ago, Urmia was the Middle East’s biggest lake, its local economy a thriving tourist center of hotels and restaurants.

“People would come here for swimming and would use the mud for therapeutic purposes. They would stay here at least for a few days,” said Ahad Ahmed, a journalist.

Lake Urmia’s demise has been fast. It has more than halved in size – from 5,400 square kilometers (2,085 square miles) in the 1990s to just 2,500 square kilometers (965 square miles) today. There are now concerns it will disappear entirely.

Such problems are familiar in many parts of the Middle East – where water is simply running out.

The region has witnessed persistent drought and temperatures so high that they are barely fit for human life. Add water mismanagement and overuse, and projections for the future of water here are grim.

Some Middle Eastern countries, including Iran, Iraq and Jordan, are pumping huge amounts of water from the ground for irrigation as they seek to improve their food self-sufficiency.

“They’re using more water than is available routinely through rain. And so groundwater levels are consequently falling because you’re taking water out faster than it’s being replenished by the rainfall,” he said.

That’s what’s happening in Iran, where a vast network of dams sustains an agricultural sector that drinks up about 90% of the water the country uses.

“Both declining rainfall and increasing demand in these countries are causing many rivers, lakes, and wetlands to dry up,” Iceland said.

The consequences of water becoming even scarcer are dire: Areas could become uninhabitable; tensions over how to share and manage water resources like rivers and lakes could worsen; more political violence could erupt.

In Iran, Urmia has shrunk largely because so many people have exploited it, and some of the dams built in its basin mainly for irrigation have reduced the flow of water into the lake.

Iran’s water woes are already a deadly issue. In one week in July, at least three protesters were killed in clashes with security officers in demonstrations against water shortages in the country’s southwest.

The country is experiencing some of the driest conditions in five decades, according to the country’s meteorological service.