Environment

Iranwire – The residents of a small town in Mashahr County, Khuzestan have reported having just one hour of running water a day. Protests broke out in Khuzestan mid-July over severe water shortages across the province. In the dilapidated town of Taleghani, families told Asr-e Iran newspaper they have been under severe water stress for 15 years. The report, published on Thursday, July 29, …

Iranwire – Protests in Khuzestan over chronic water shortages began in mid-July this year. People have since taken to the streets in other Iranian cities in solidarity with their cause, chanting anti-government slogans and even tearing down banners of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Elsewhere in Iran, tensions have also flared up over the widespread power outages that have now plagued the country for months. When the …

environmentalsystemsresearch – The climate change fact is intensive among the Middle East countries and especially Iran. Among the Middle East countries, Iran will experience an increase of 2.6 °C in mean temperatures and a 35% decline in precipitation in the next decades. In vice versa, Iran by total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions nearly to 616,741 million tons of CO2 is the first …

VOA – When the civil war erupted in Syria a decade ago, some Middle East observers and climate scientists argued drought was one of the significant drivers of the conflict. Drought in the years preceding the war caused an agricultural collapse in parts of eastern and northern Syria, forcing rural families to migrate to cities in ever larger numbers and …

Al-Monitor – The disruption of water supply has long been a potential catalyst for conflict or instability in the arid Middle East. But it’s never been as prominent a risk as it is now. Nile dam deadlock: Egypt looks to China to help Ethiopia announced July 19 that it had completed this year’s filling of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), which it …

Iranwire – “Today, these issues of the climate crisis, the water crisis, the energy crisis, global warming crisis, are raised as the principal issues of humanity. But they are not. The main problems of humanity are spirituality and morality; issues of men and women, the status of women, the dignity of women in society. These are the real crisis.” Ali …

Al-Monitor – The Iranian government cut internet access in the past week during protests in an impoverished province, according to an internet watchdog. There were disruptions to internet access on cellphones from July 15-20, and the blockage knocked out approximately 3% to 4% of mobile data in Iran, the London-based NetBlocks announced Wednesday. The group said there were “widespread user reports of …

Iranwire – The thousands-strong protests over the water crisis in Khuzestan have refocused attention on an unfolding ecological disaster going back years. Since the turn of the century, Iran has been experiencing “anthropogenic drought”: severe water stress, caused specifically by destructive and unsustainable land and water management, by human beings. This summer, farmers in Khuzestan have been left unable to irrigate their …

VOA – Water shortage protests in drought-plagued southwestern Iran appear to have spread to more cities and resulted in what authorities say is a third fatality as the unrest extended into a seventh day. Videos posted to social media appeared to show street protests on Wednesday in several parts of Khuzestan province, including the cities of Susangerd and Masjed Soleyman. …

Iranwire – Unprecedented protests in Khuzestan over the province’s nightmarish water crisis entered their fifth night on July 18. Protesters gathered outside government buildings and marched in their hundreds through the streets in a number of major cities. Angry demonstrators amassed outside the governor’s office in the provincial capital of Ahvaz, where the city center also witnessed bigger crowds than on previous …