Hadi Kiadaliri, the vice president of the Iran Forestry Association, criticized prevailing approaches to development, food security, the water crisis, and forest protection, stating that Iran has reached the highest level of soil erosion and has become the record holder for this crisis.
Kiadaliri said in an interview with the state-run ISNA news agency on Sunday, December 28, that according to the findings of a study, “50% of oil revenues” must be spent annually solely on restoring soil fertility in the Zagros region.
He added that between 2004 and 2020, 3.6 million hectares were added to orchard and rain-fed agricultural lands, meaning that nearly 500 hectares of rangelands and forests were destroyed every day.
Every Year, Tens of Thousands of Hectares of Land in Iran Become Degraded
The vice president of the Forestry Association emphasized: “Agriculture in a country where about 93% of the land is arid and semi-arid cannot carry the burden of development, but we have done this, and to achieve it, we have converted many natural resource lands into farmland.”
In recent months, the Iranian regime’s policies on water, agriculture, and industry and their widespread consequences across the country, including environmental damage and direct impacts on people’s livelihoods, have drawn increased attention.
In November, Roozbeh Eskandari, an environmental researcher, warned in an article that Iran is facing a negative water balance of about 130 billion cubic meters, and that the continuation of the current situation has led to soil erosion, a drinking water supply crisis, the drying up of rivers and wetlands, the spread of dust storms, and an accelerated process of desertification and uninhabitability of the land.
Referring to the “failure of the Iranian regime in environmental governance,” he added that in the government’s view, water is not regarded as a vital element and part of the land’s ecological cycle, but rather as an economic resource and a tool for expanding agriculture and industry.
“We defined food security incorrectly”
The vice president of the Forestry Association said in the continuation of the interview: “We used as much water as we could for agricultural development. As a result, we defined food security incorrectly; because food security is not merely about the abundance of food, its availability, and its safety, but environmental resilience is also part of this concept.”
Kiadaliri, criticizing about 70 years of exploitation of resources in northern Iran, added: “At one time, we were fighting to implement the forest rest plan. One of the members of parliament said people are poor and forests must be exploited. My question was why people are still poor after decades of exploitation?”
He emphasized that achieving sustainable development through environmental destruction is not possible, and that the experience of developed countries has shown that with compatible policies, both can be achieved simultaneously.
According to the vice president of the Forestry Association, the concept of “economic development,” in addition to economic growth, pays attention to sustainability, wealth distribution, combating poverty, and improving quality of life.
On December 6, Masoud Pezeshkian, the president of Iran’s regime, ordered the official launch of operations for the water transfer project from the Persian Gulf to Iran’s central plateau.
At the time, experts warned about the ecological, economic, and hydrological consequences of the project and described it as a “temporary bandage” on the wound of Iran’s water bankruptcy.
Earlier in November, the publication “Payam-e Ma” wrote, referring to the government’s decision to accelerate the construction of three large dams on the central plateau, that the move lacks environmental permits and contributes to the worsening of the water crisis.
