TEHRAN – Head of the Iran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture (ICCIMA) has said the water crisis in the country is deteriorating and the government has only 10 years to manage the situation, the ICCIMA portal reported.

Speaking at Iran’s first Agricultural and Food Products Trade Summit on Tuesday, Gholam-Hossein Shafeie emphasized that Iran will not have a bigger challenge than water shortage in the future, saying: “if the current trend continues, over the next 10 years we will not see a living creature in parts of Iran.”

According to statistics, our path of movement with regard to water issues is not the path of development. 40 years ago, there were a total of 47,000 wells across the country; but the number reached about 850,000 in 2018, Shafeie said.

He further referred to the importance of the agricultural economy and the impacts of the water crisis on this sector, saying: “Agriculture is a very important issue for Iran and any other country. Of course, in the case of Iran, the internal and external interpretations are different in terms of the strategic position in the region, as well as the seasons and weather diversity, which makes this issue more important.”

EF/MA