Iran Is Turning Into A Desert

A dried-up salt lake near Sirjan, Iran. A seven-year drought in the country shows no sign of ending. Credit Newsha Tavakolian for The New York Times

New York Times: Scarred Riverbeds and Dead Pistachio Trees in a Parched Iran

POUZE KHOON, Iran — The early-morning sun meagerly brightened the gloom of this sad township, a collection of empty, crumbling houses along a highway through the dusty desert landscape in southeastern Iran.

Until a decade or so ago, Amin Shoul would come here every year to help his father harvest pistachios, the nuts that are as much a symbol of Iran as caviar. Now, with the last reserves of groundwater tapped out, the family’s grove and the seemingly endless fields beyond it are filled with dead trees, their bone-colored branches a deathly contrast to the turquoise sky.

Mr. Shoul, 32, a journalist, said he and his family had moved away years ago, leaving the house to squatters, unemployed laborers living off meager government stipends — and even they had started to leave. “I don’t see how we can ever return to the past,” he remarked, matter-of-factly.

WNU Editor: An Iranian friend of mine told me that this was happening two years ago. Too many people in a region that does not have enough water, bad (if not horrendous) water management, massive depletion of ground water, pollution, and old (and inefficient) irrigation techniques for farming. Bottom line .... this is a problem that is only going to get worse.