The crisis of water resources has reached a critical threshold worldwide.
An extreme example comes from the Middle East, where researchers and officials indicate Iran as the first country in the world to enter the water bankruptcy – a deep state of collapse of the water balance, in which the water demand irreversibly exceeds the available reserves.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian warned on Thursday that if no urgent measures are taken to reduce consumption, the dams that feed the Tehran capital could dry until September or October: “In Tehran, if people do not cooperate and do not control consumption, there will be no water in dams,” Iran said.
Crisis, amplified by drought and waste
The Iranian Agency Tasnim points out that the country is already experiencing frequent interruptions of electricity, gases and water during peak periods, due to defective government and excessive consumption.
Iran has already gone through five consecutive years of drought, and in the last four months, the rainfall was 40% below the multiannual average, according to Sheene Ansari, the director of environmental protection.
The biggest challenge is the excessive water consumption because 70% of the inhabitants of Tehran consumes above the standard of 130 liters of water per day, said the head of the Regional Water and Sewerage Company, Mohsen Ardakani, for the Mehr news agency.
An announced collapse
The current crisis is not just the result of drought. 80% of the national water consumption comes from agriculture, where the irrigation methods are old and inefficient.
The management of natural resources remains a difficulty for the Iranian authorities, both in terms of the consumption of natural gas and water. The solutions require large structural reforms, and these political will, especially in the agricultural sector, which is responsible for about 80% of the national water consumption.
The head of state rejected the Government’s proposal on Wednesday to establish a day off every Wednesday or a week -long vacation in summer, claiming that “the closing of the activity is a coverage, not a solution to the problem of water lack.”
The situation is also aggravated by the excessive extraction of groundwater. In Tehran, the land is up to 22 cm a year as a result of the exhaustion of aquifers, a phenomenon documented in 2024 by Deutsche Welle.
Iran opens an increasing list
Iran is not a unique example, but only the first example of the country in which water ends before oil. A study published in January 2025 by Science magazine shows that the number of extreme, multi-annual droughts has increased significantly in the last 40 years, already affecting the northern Chile in a 14-year-old drought, the South-West USA, where precipitation is well below the 8-year-old historical average, the southern Australia, 3 years, and other regions of Africa Central Sahara and Savana from Subsahanian Africa.
The areas affected by such droughts grow annually by almost 50,000 square kilometers, according to the study, influencing ecosystems, agriculture and drinking water reserves for hundreds of millions of people.
