I'm Iranian and pretty much everything he said is on point. One thing I want to add is that building dams has also increased the rate of desertification. Around 20 years ago a river flowed around 10 kilometers from where I live. As long as this river flowed and it always did, several natural springs flowed water to lands that had little rainfall. When I was a child I remember how many trees and animals were around us. The land was alive and beautiful. So many different bird and animals. I used to go among the trees and just sit for hours in summers. Now a dam is keeping all of the river water for agriculture around the dam. The river no longer flows down river and the springs have long dried out. When the springs dried All the trees died. Birds didn't come back from migration and other animals are nonexistent. Land has become a desert. It is dead where there isn't a deep well to pump water. It's truely depressing.
I'm also kinda worried whether all those dams built now can be maintained in the future; something that was kinda missed in the video. Governments all over the world have a "build it and forget it" attitude, and a damaged/failed dams can do a lot of damage downstream.
Can you please help me understanding it - is it about damns, that made springs to stop flowing? Or is it rather lowered ground water (because fo water pumps) or even something else? It very surprising for me to hear damns cause desertification.
Consider that the global warming could have contributed to this, not only the dams. Where I live, I could enjoy winter sports when I was a kid, nowadays there's hardly any snow.
As an Iranian, I enjoyed the accuracy and excellent presentation of your video. Water scarcity has been a serious concern for decades and unfortunately, the regime does not value knowledge and expertise, only loyalty and obedience. That is one of the main reasons behind mismanagement.
Meritocracy is in decline all over the world. In the US, Trump's attack on "The Swamp" was really an attack on skilled, educated people actually getting things done, operating a government, doing what the agencies are there for. The Democrats are too busy hiring people based on ethnicity and oddness, to be bothered with elevating the most competent. Though, these are far from our largest issues: elections bought by campaign contributions, media making money by stirring up hate and fear, driving people into factions, and pushing each generation deeper and deeper into moral depravity, and now absurd propaganda, pork barrel spending waste, relentless mergers strangling consumers, and the government, resulting in absurd debt accumulation, NIMBYism, and some flavors of environmentalism, which don't allow enough infrastructure and housing to be built, leading to homelessness, traffic congestion (which does not merely slow people down, but rewards aggressive selfishness and dehumanization, while wasting energy), politicians which poison legislation to try to have it fail and at very great cost to the public (that is why healthcare is 50% more expensive per capita than in Switzerland, while life expectancy is 59th place). We have businesses make workplaces safe at great cost, but we have unsafe roads (poor lighting, not enough barriers separating oncoming traffic above 40 MPH and not enough sidewalks), and unsafe cars (cars are made to look good for the tests, but increase the speed of collisions above 40 MPH, and the cars become deathtraps, and make large numbers of permanently disabled people that can't work). Another of our big problems is that farm States have a lot of say in the Senate. This puts the interests of industrial farms above the health of the people. They use toxic fertilizers like bone meal, which has a lot of lead, they use small aircraft to plant rice which still use leaded fuel, and they only replace minerals whose absence reduces yields. There are no standards for nutrition from crops. Organophosphates should have been banned ever since scientists discovered that they rob our children of IQ points. Nearly all the baby food has lead in it. And just like Iran, farmers waste lots of water. We also have been suckered by the food industry into eating more and more foods with Advanced Glycation End-products (AGEs) in them. These are created by intense heat in the food factories. They want to make small crisp things, because they can make them fast, using incredible temperatures for a short amount of time. AGEs are also created by high speed blending in machines in factories or in the home. And they are made by fermentation, but mostly the concern there is "hard cheeses." The farmers and food industry is killing the population. The drugmakers want to just treat it, and make billions or trillions of dollars, even as life expectancy continues to fall. Medical mistakes, doctors and hospitals don't even have to report, kill over 250,000 people a year. How many maim? No one has even looked into that. 45.2 million Americans are disabled. The Chinese live almost 2 years longer than us now. Which candidate for President cares about any of these REAL issues? None. No one can stand up against big agro, big media, the automakers (and their unions), defense contractors, the chemical industry, NIMBYs, realtors, big banks, big insurance and big pharma. There are no trustbusters, no one is even stopping mergers.
The biggest attack on Meritocracy, is gov’t hiring quotas, and allowing unqualified students into college, and denying Asians and whites that were qualified. The attack on the swamp was a reaction to DEI, DOJ corruption, FBI corruption, and depts like the education department that we don’t need. As Ronald Reagan said “ the frightening words were “I’m with the government and I am here to help”.
One comment about water use efficiency and surface irrigation: Generally it is true that a larger share of water is lost to evaporation from the soil with surface irrigation, but the largest portion of that 65% ‘inefficiency’ is from water that goes down below the root zone and which percolates back into the underground aquifer. This water is theoretically available to be pumped again some years in the future. What that means is that using more efficient means of irrigation (such as drip irrigation, which can be as high as 90-95% efficient), the number of farmable crop land doesn’t increase by the expected 2-2.5x, because a large percentage of that efficiency gain comes from sending less water past the root one. Drip irrigation is almost always superior, but not by the amount that would be expected using simple math. -A farmer in California who uses a variety of irrigation methods
is the size of the land also affecting watering technique for agriculture? because i've heard that in iran they have small pieces of land here and there, and so the types of watering techniques that they can use is very limited.
@@mbuhplus7800 surface irrigation (aka flood irrigation) is one of the cheapest ways to irrigate, and it’s very economical on small plots of land. In many cases, flood irrigation also doesn’t require electricity or any pressurization. The systems also don’t require filtration and are very low maintenance. But they use a lot of excess water. If water is heavily subsidized or is just naturally very cheap (like if it’s being pumped from a river or very shallow well), the economics of a drip system can be difficult to justify just off of water savings. And especially for small plots, the “fixed costs” such as a pump and filtration system can’t be spread out over a larger area. So if it’s the case that plot sizes are very small, and if water is subsidized as it says in the video, then those two factors would make it difficult to justify investing in an expensive irrigation system
As a homesteader in Missouri, where we have plenty of water, our policy has been to use drip irrigation from a rain capture system. We also extensively grow produce indoors to supply a local market, using drip irrigation. We don't treat our currently abundant water resources like the taps will never run dry. It's all about water management.
Water management everywhere is a mess and drought is becoming more than inevitable everywhere. Key fallacy missed nearly entirely wasn't just water and aquafer management ineptitudes in soils management and setasides, but the new salt flats do bring new recreational opportunities to the area?
brad, As you know, recharging aquifers is very difficult and assuming that excess water used in irrigation will simply percolate into the aquifer is problematic.
So far, as a hopeless docu-junky, I have come to the conclusion that Asianometry's organizational style and calm narrating voice is my favorite. I feel that producers with 10,000 views or more should be required to take a class from him. His contributions to contemprary computing history are particularly noteworthy as many of his chosen subjects are under-examined, under-digested periods with great bearing on our present order.
I didn’t recognise how significant this channel was, until I’d watched almost every video Asianometry has put out. The level of insight into topics I never imagined I’d have educated my self on is astonishing. A true gem.
I love all the Asianometry mini-docs, but the water ones are especially my jam. Thank you for all the wonderful work you are doing with this channel, enjoyable and educational to the extreme.
I got really happy to see one of my favourite channels on UA-cam post about my country Iran. Unfortunately no good news ever come from Iran. Although it's expected considering our government and it's political situation. Thank you Asianometry for educating us!
As an Iranian I must admit that this video was one of best videos about Iran's water issues I have seen in quiet a long time Very factual and well researched Well done 👏👏👏
as a former water regulator for government, i am thoroughly impressed as to not only the amount of information you managed to research and pack into 20 min, but also the quality of your presentation, and finally, more importantly, how you convey the message. Well done!
Thank you for your consistently insightful and precise videos. As an Iranian, I can validate the issues and analyses presented. However, there have also been grievous industrial decisions. For instance, the establishment of steel, cement, aluminum, and other water-intensive factories in provinces ill-equipped for such industries. This has led to the diversion of crucial rivers and the depletion of ancient reservoirs and lakes through pipes and subterranean tunnels. Within a mere four decades, this has wreaked havoc on our ecosystem. While our history spanning five millennia has taught us resource management in the Iranian plateau, the recent missteps serve as a stark lesson for humanity. It underscores how short-sighted leadership can push an ancient civilization to the precipice of collapse in just 40 years.
I was in Iran for the very first time in my life last week, and was saddened to see how the number of trees has plummeted in Valiasr Street or what was once known as Pahlavi Street in Tehran, from 24,000 in the 40s, to around 7000-8000 today, all thanks to water and soil mismanagement. My Iranian friend, who happens to be an environmental scientist as well, informed me how the natural water-flow networks have been destroyed, and how the water and soil is contaminated. Not to mention air pollution, poor construction methods, leading to a rise in the number of rats, which damages the roots of the trees, along with the lack of exposure to sunlight, due to high-rise buildings nearby. She showed me pictures of her grandparents in the area from the 50s, and a number of aerial pictures of this around 18km street, from the 80s all the way to last year, 2022. It was depressing. Not to mention the disasters in other parts of the country. Mind you, this is a famous street in the nation capital. Just think about the destruction throughout the country. She also emphasized that the majority of people don’t treat trees properly as well. Which is another factor that she believes leads to the erosion of nature. She’s also worried that things will only get worse from here onwards, as the economy keeps deteriorating ever further. “If we couldn’t take care of our natural resources properly during the heyday of the oil age, how would we fair at the tail-end of its twilight?” I only spent 3 nights in Tehran, unfortunately, and flew back home to Abu Dhabi. I would’ve loved to stay longer, and to have seen more of the country. But, I simply couldn’t. Hopefully, that would happen one day. Oh, and I found young people such as myself, quite friendly, I daresay. I met my friend through Goodreads in June of 2016, and this was the first time we ever met in-person, after seven years and four months of knowing one another. Which is insane, given that Tehran is only a two hour flight away. 🤷♂️ 😅
Are these the young people who are gleefully parading around the streets celebrating the murders of 600 civilians in Israel. Such lovely peaceful harmless welcoming people!
@@occamraiserResearch a bit about Iran and it's political situation. The average Iranian would not do such thing. The problem arises with the government and the sycophant minority of its supporters who have all the freedom in the world to do whatever the fuck they want. Thousands of Iranians died just last year to try to fight and overthrow the government. Believe it or not Iranians are victims of their government as well. The youth in Iran aren't even religious no more, at least that's the case in big cities. A big portion of them are islamophobic even. Iranian politics is complex even for us Iranians so I can't expect foreigners to fully understand it but please don't spread hatred. Trust me, average Iranians are sad about what happened in Israel and they are sick and tired of their government funding proxy wars and making the region unstable. Specially since they're struggling to make ends meet with their daily lives and after all it's their tax/oil money.
Very well-said. Bravo 👏 I didn’t even want to indulge that person’s hatred and self-evident ignorance. Especially, when bringing up something that has nothing to do with this video or my comment. Which goes without saying, that the person is clearly disturbed, and would like people to accommodate his engagement farm 🤷♂️
Indeed: wars, revolutions, mass migrations... collapse of all semblance of social order and prosperity. We're collectively living on borrowed time: the ecological damage is massive already, I fear something at least as bad as the Late Bronze Age Collapse, which destroyed civilizations and erased whole nations from the face of Earth. Take Egypt for example: before it was a superpower, after it could barely stand independent anymore and soon it became nothing but a coveted province for others to conquer. And it wasn't the unluckiest one, what happened to the Ausones, the Trojans, the Hittites or the once prosperous Syrian city of Ugarit?
@@LuisAldamiz I just hope human civilization keep its technological level and democracy intact. Even 1% of human survive past 200 years later with technology and democracy intact is really great.
@@hikashia.halfiah3582 - IDK, I want to be optimistic but the logical outcome of such a massive eco-catastrophe in our reality seems to be total nuclear war, after things spiral out of control. When the choice is dying of thirst or playing nuclear Russian roulette, most will choose the latter... and when you play nuclear Russian roulette often enough, nuclear armaggedon ensues. And the chances of 1% surviving that are very slim. Some want to imagine that remote areas may survive nuclear winter but they ignore radioactivity... Would it "only" be conventional war... then yes, some would survive and rebuild, but would it not be for nuclear deterrence, I'm sure we would have suffered several world wars already, each more catastrophic than the previous one. Without nukes the many horrors of the Ukraine War would be the much worse horrors of total global war... but the price paid is the risk of total extinction, something unthinkable 80 years ago. Capitalism has unleashed the "productive forces" of Humanity but can it control them before such superpowers destroy the planet one way or another? Clearly not, because its driven by greed and short-term gain, it is competitive and not cooperative, it is predatory (growth = destruction) and not caring ward of the precious substrate we live on. We stand at the red line of such unprecedented civilizational challenge that we can barely wrap our minds around it un understand what's happening. Yet we must, and not just understand but also something much more difficult: reign on the many troubles that our socio-economic misbehavior has caused, and we must do all that very fast, and we don't even know where to start even. And yet most people, incl. the powerful, live day to day without such concerns because it's all so mindbogglingly scary that we feel powerless and adrift, ruled by socio-economic (and political) forces well beyond our capacity. Probably our best hope is that the collapse is so fast and furious that there's not even chance of starting a nuclear war. Then the survivors will somehow rebuild from the ashes, hopefully having learned something.
Similar problems in Morocco. There are laws regulating wells, but they are not enforced. The land is littered with abandoned wells which are extremely dangerous. People drill deeper and deeper. Enforcement would hurt the poor. Could you tell a family or poor village to starve instead of exploiting that resource regardless? But at the same time big agri complexes (owned by the king and his people quite often) would be untouchable anyway... Climate change AND overexploited water resources will be a horrific duo.
I don't think Morocco's water problems are in any way comparable to the ABSOLUTE HORRORS that await those in the Middle East! Climate Change coupled with TERRIBLE watergoverning is actually what gives the current abysmal state of affairs. (Then again POPULATION BOOM in the middle of a hot desert is bound to create troubles!)
@@millevenon5853 Unlike Saudi Arabia, Iran actually has mountains with snow and the north that isn't arid... And I don't know if you noticed but desalinated seawater lacks natural and vital minerals our body needs. This is why people in the Gulf often have conditions people in other parts of the globe don't have. Liver issues, bone issues due to reduced mineral intake etc. etc.
The TSMC comment was very fitting. In Taiwan, TSMC has had to slow production due to drought, so what do they do? Build a new plant in AZ. I'm still scratching my head over that decision, but of course cheap desert land is attractive I guess.
In my country Brazil, water is abundant, so waste is immense. It's ironic to think how some countries have so much of this resource, and Iran has almost nothing.
It's always so sad to see those photos of disappearing lakes and seas. I recently listened to a video about the tensions between Iran and Afghanistan over water, but this definitely helped flesh out my understanding of the issue (not to mention teaching me a bit more about the modern Iranian government). Thank you for this. God be with you out there everybody. ✝️ :)
Conscise, through and factual. As an Iranian I appreciate your effort researching this brillian video about Iran's catastrophic management of water resources.
Anahita comes to mind after reading some of the Avesta. Now I understand why for Zarathushtis water was so important. At least they understood that there's must be a balance in nature for everything to exist.
Short answer: No. Most humans settle around rivers, but those rivers are not always directly related to the rainfall. (including countries like Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan)
I am excited that you are moving beyond East and South East Asia, though I do hope you'll make more videos about East Asian states and the policies they utilized during their high growth periods(and obviously technological/industrial progress )
You should do a video on desalination and the saudi city of riyadh. Its fascinating how you can have a megacity in an area with little water and so far away from sea
The city I live in here in Finland has 8 lakes in it if I remember right. That's almost as many lakes as the whole Iran has. We got about 190 000 lakes here.
Iran has 22 lakes. I don't think I'd call that "almost 8." Besides, let's also take into account the size of the lakes. Urmia lake in Iran is one of the largest in the world, for instance. A few thousand of Finland's lakes would fit in it.
By "surface irrigated", I assume you mean traditional flood irrigation (ditches and gates). Things like center-pivot irrigation is generally much more water efficient and has the side effect of producing greater crop yields because of the elimination of over-irrigated and under-irrigated sections of a field.
War is an adjustment process. Stable food and water or stable population level. Guys cant keep it in their pants SO some adjustment methods are necessary. Of course not just periodic wars. Then (before anyone else jumps in to mention it!) there is the issue of demographic age balance. PRC is adjusting for its successful era of one child policy. Now to see how they get on. Hopefully no unwelcome foreign interference. We wait and watch. So far no war there except in America's eyes.
do you think you could make a video about exactly why semiconductor fabs haven’t been able to do large scale water reclamation yet? their water consumption seems to be crippling
He's talked about this. Fabs recover like 75% of their water, plus often purchase water reclamation for the region they're in. Intel is a net positive water influence in the areas their fabs are in. Disclaimer though, I work for intel. TSMC does similar things.
Add to that Singapore's New Water. 75 to 80 percent are reclaimed and recycled. Some are placed back to reservoirs . Some are returned backs directly to industries such as wafer fabs. Underground tunnels were created to store the water.
in costa rica we make some semiconductors we have intel among many others, i think one of the reasons they are exapndin here is because of water, at one point we will have to limit which companies enter this beatiful country. climate change is coming for all but some places will stand longer i hope my country is one of those at a karmatic level we deserve it hahah since we have conservation in our dna unlike many other nations.
Iran is actually makings many allies. even their old enemies the Saudis are becoming friendly with them, why? because the Middle east has had enough of the west and israel pitting Arabs and Muslims against each other.
Very interesting! This is something rarely talked about, but highly important; specially the water crisis in Iran which is unique. I would like to point out a few things, first, many hellenistic reports say that Iran used to be highly forested in many parts (but not all) and even the todays more arid land used to have more forests. Major deforestation happened because of Mongol and Turkic ecological destruction on Iran, and many other parts of land they conquered. I am not in anyway an expert on this subject, but I would liked to know your views on many river projects in Iran, like example Iranrud which would had built a river from the Persian gulf to the caspian and supposedly made major lakes in todays Iranian deserts. Such a plan might be overreaching, but smaller ones, special from the Persian gulf with large extensions and expansion of lakes would be something that might be interesting. Another that you mention is Iranian over consumption. This is not just water in agricultural, but gas, food or anything else. It is insanely over consumped. I do not believe this is just because of subsiditation or centrally planned projects, but more to do with some parts of Iranian lifestyle that does over consume. Because of that I believe, as Iran is mostly centrally planned, Iran has to intervene and not just make agriculture more efficient, but reduce over consumption. Many other things like some over building projects, specially dams or buildings also needs to be regulated. But a lot has to do with the states willingness to act in this major crisis. But I would really like to see a video on what could reduce water stress in the region. A qoute from the former minister of agriculture from Wikipedia "the water crisis is the "main problem that threatens" Iran, adding that it is more dangerous "than Israel, USA or political fighting among the Iranian elite". If the water issue is not addressed, Iran could become "uninhabitable". If this situation is not reformed, in 30 years Iran will be a ghost town. Even if there is precipitation in the desert, there will be no yield, because the area for groundwater will be dried and water will remain at ground level and evaporate.""
If the Qanat system were revived and maintained, could this help eleviate the problem? Subsidizing rice production in near desert conditions is a bad use of water resources.
it's not California Imperial Valley or even Central Valley bad. The vast majority of Rice grown in Iran is done in the wet and verdant Caspian sea plains; it's more the issue of systemic inefficiencies. With enough future development with more efficient water allotment and policy change; Iran could get themselves out of the issue and still be massive rice producers. However to the south in the actual deserts; things are not so certain, much as with the American Southwest.
I'm no hydrologist, but I very much doubt the qanats would do more than marginally help. The qanat tapped waters will otherwise flow to reservoirs. The qanats reduce evaporation. But with precipitation being seasonal, without reservoirs, most of the water would either have to be used in a short spurt (not practical) or be left to flow out to sea. Based on seasonal precipitation and evaporation being a problem with reservoirs, it sounds like Iran should forcibly pump excess seasonal waters back into the aquifers. That would address the evaporation and distribute the water to the reported ~800,000 wells (many being illegal). But as stated here, Iran fundamentally needs to better manage this resource.
@@gregparrott bro, whachu bin smokin? 6 states in us and entire south uk and nearly entire planet are having the same problem. why don't you use your genius there? guess where they're having the problem? exact pattern as iran, in the south, except california and utah are north but there is simply no solution when the rivers or waters flow south to a point and then dryland. you should try desalination and let me know if you live, which you won't, and i'll let iran know, lol
@@ariaspes3842 You should stick to music 'bro'. That might save you from making snide, presumptuous comments. I live in the west and have visited all of the western states in the last 3 years. I am quite aware of what you mentioned. I am also aware of the west's water shortages, land subsidence in California, as well as subsidence in China and India (thanks to both INSAR and GRACE satellites). However, you completely missed the difference in SCALE. Despite California being near the tail end of the Colorado river, California remains the country's largest producer of agriculture. (Mexico is the terminus and receives ~10% of the Colorado river flow). Utah has a lot of desert, yet is building like crazy, including stupid things like lots of golf courses in a hot. dry desert. Just visit Hurricane and St, George to see how bonkers the growth is. EDIT: St. George is ranked as the nation's fastest growing metropolitan area...abcnews.go.com/US/st-george-utah-worries-water-supply-amidst-historic/story?id=98480501#:~:text=Drought%20has%20gripped%20the%20region,drought%20is%20still%20a%20concern.&text=The%20St.,nation's%20fastest%2Dgrowing%20metropolitan%20area. And then there's Las Vegas. Need I say more? If you fly in, look down at the number of pools at private residences. (I think built-in pools have finally been banned for newly built homes.) So that's a start. Aside from the giant water displays, I find it grating that every hotel I've stayed at has shower heads that flow at SEVERAL TIMES the rate of my resource efficient ones at home. So much for conservation. As for desalination, San Diego and Santa Barbara use it. Monterey has proposed one, and California has approved it, but I don't think funding has yet to be acquired. With strong conservation measures, they likely wouldn't even need it. The scale of the problem is FAR worse in the Middle East. My point, 'bro', is you need not be snide, and you need not be so presumptuous as to assume I know nothing of comparative water shortages.
It's hardly economical to use desalinated water for *anything.* The countries that engage in desalination do it out of sheer desperation. (These are mostly autocratic petrostates.) If it ever became widespread practice, expect per-capita energy usage to go up by a lot. It'll only happen if and when the going prices of water are much higher than they have ever been historically. You'll know if that happens; there will be a big row over it. People in most countries are used to getting their water far below cost, to the point it's an afterthought.
If you have sunshine you can desalinate water, Israel desalinates water and recycles 95% of their water and has a thriving agricultural sector. All mussie countries are basket cases - without oil as liquid money all arab countries would be poor sheet-holes.
A few months ago, Peter Zeihan and other prognosticators said water would be the next scarce resource - not oil, not food, but water - and here we are. Africa, the ME, and Afghanistan are already fighting over water. China is ignoring its environmental problems. The West is even more focuses on climate change than water management. I live in California, and, while drought has been an issue for decades, I think were more “used to it” than taking it seriously.
You mix gross world overpopulation across the board, climate change raising the heat index, the fact that everyone has been sucking the ground water aquifers dry with little regulation for the past century and throw in the huge influx of demand on water from manufacturing, agriculture, and food production and it's pretty obvious where all the water is going. Too many people are literally pissing it away. Droughts and wildfires are going to become the new normal every year from here on out and ground water is going to continue to disappear as quickly as the temperatures rise. Just lovely...
most online 'prognosticators' are professional bullshit artists, especially zeihan and the people he commonly associates with. what's the saying, throw enough shit at the wall and some will stick? water being a source of conflcit is not some new groundbreaking discovery or prophecy, it's been a known problem and a cause of conflict among smaller underdeveloped nations for decades at the very least. it's just like climate change; countries consistently fail to address the root of the problem. lakes, rivers, streams being knowingly polluted beyond belief or dried completely because of deregulation or plain ignorance and bad resource management.
Potable water is increasing becoming a scarce resource throughout the world. I always thought Iran's belligerence problem will be its undoing, and it still may, but as much infrastructure that it builds to overcome their water problem, it won't be solved unless climate change gives it more water. Common sense tells us it should cut back on belligerence and concentrate more on water, but common sense in this world is a rare commodity. It seems that every country whose main money making resource is oil always runs into political problems that manage to ruin their economy.
It is called the "resources curse" - google it. Basically if you have resources that are easy money for small groups in society to appropriate the cash from (and oil is the classic resource for this) then those small groups will run the country for their benefit. It becomes a lot easier for individuals to get out of poverty by stealing things rather than by building things so governance at all levels becomes chronically bad whether those governments are leftwing, rightwing or religious. It is the story of the Middle East and much of Africa.
That's because it is easy to become dependent and lazy on a single big profit resource. Once instituted, that dependence is extraordinarily difficult to overcome. Consider how much trouble Saudi Arabia would be in if it had to depend on per barrel profits typical of the USA!
IF only....if only...Iran & Israel were friends! Water problem would be solved. For those who don't know, Israel has one of the best, if not the BEST water management systems in the world. From micro "drip" irrigation (saves up 75% of water) to state-of-the-art desalination plant. They did out of necessity (it's do or die like many desert nations) but today they're one of the leading experts on water management. But we're too busy "hating" each other over religion.
If only Israel agencies and mossad didn't paid all living costs of Iran's supreme leader before his arrival to Iran in paris and Iraq for 20 years. If only iran's revolution wasn't run by mossad and cia to engineer the perfect boogeyman.
@@sha29i the Omani Qanat irrigation system is called Falaj and it has been built with the same principles of the Persian Qanat but with the addition of it being self containing and doesn't allow for people to extract more water from it due to its reliance of the canals being inclines built into them to prevent extracting more water than what's designed to output and they also use natural underground pressure and sophisticated engineering to distribute the water equally to each farmland within the village. These systems are smaller than the Persian Qanat and have built-in constraints to limited population that their requirements grew steadily and slowly so it explains why they didn't run dry ancient times this is an example of such system ua-cam.com/video/_1hebGcD6bM/v-deo.htmlsi=z0QhXg0W2cgb2Q7z
@@desertblade1874 these seem to be open air canals. Much of the complexity of the Persian qanat is them being underground and the calculations needed to dig in the right place etc. Asked chatgpt how they compared and it thinks the omani ones are less complex in construction.
Tunneling on any scale is great science. Worth documenting and preserving. This system occurs pretty much worldwide. China and Europe included . No modern nation can claim ownership of the principle. It is good to compare and appreciate all such systems. Would be nice to restore the Persian/ Iranian Quanat to former glory. Those few photographs were alluring.
@@rutvikrslol in the philippines, many filipinos would also read maharaja as maharaha as a legacy of the past spanish orthography used centuries ago that is still alive in some placenames and surnames
I'm curious: if the qanats were to be reapired, would there be water flowing through them or the dams system would still have altered the water flow, permanently?
Fresh water is really becoming the next big resource race. No water means no life, after all, and the mismanagement of a nation's water is every bit as important as the way it manages its oil.
First, we got excellent TSMC stock advice - now front running info on a new WAR ! This channel is as close as I'll get to "inside information " Thanks my Man ❤❤❤
I remember when former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blamed Israel for it's water woes. Claiming that they were using geoengineering to prevent it from raining.
@@hououinkyouma1458yes there are many economic and religious problems here Most people don't believe in islam like they used to 50 years ago but the government (that has the power) still forces people to wear hejab (you can read about last year and what happened to mahsa amini) But these aside we have economic problems our rial currency value has dropped 20 times over the last 6 years relative to us dollar we are not connected to international banks Also we might be "islamic republic of iran" but when we choose a president it goes through so many filters that people that we can choose are not who we want at the end of the day also president in our country doesn't have full authority anyways because there is a "rahbar"(leader) that we can't choose Here If someone deemed successful they would be able to migrate to another county because growing here as a person is close to impossible I think a mini documentary about this would be fun too
@@hououinkyouma1458 not really, but so many people can't tolerate regime actions and ideology and migrate to other countries, next year I'm going to apply for phd for us or canada too
Very interesting program. When it comes to water, this part of the Middle East seems like an emerging basket case. It's neighbors to the east - Afghanistan and Pakistan, have had military skirmishes over Pakistan's construction of dams which limit the flow downstream, into Afghanistan. Both of those countries have the same issues as Iran - insufficient water and agriculture for a growing population, poor governance, regional fighting, depletion of water tables, and increasing temperatures. A lot of the same can also be said for Iran's neighbors to the west - Iraq, and even further west - Syria. Then, to the south, there's 'the land of sand' - Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the UAE. Barring their oil, these countries would fare even worse.
Dig ponds or canals with 4/5 ft depth. Lay polythene at the bottom of the pond or canal. Over polythene, put 1ft mud then preserve rain water. Due to polythene below, water cannot go away.....
San Francisco built a 269 km aqueduct and dam from the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne to San Francisco. It took from 1913 to 1934. But construction machinery has advanced since the age of the steam shovel.
old iranian videos show that. barefoot village of israel learned that from iran, idi0t. and iran doesn't steal water like israel does from palestine, lol
This is not about the topic of the video, but it hurt me when I saw how people drove on the road at around 6:20. I had no idea how much something like that would bother me.
They need to regulate the misuse of water, massively improve water irrigation practices, reduce ground water usage and switch to less water intensive crops.
@@souvikrc4499 why aren’t you working? a working person doesn’t have hours to meddle in other people’s business. so you’re telling us that millions are homeless in your country but some fake news about iran is more important? Did you know that taxpayers pay for below poverty standards troll salaries and therefore wel-fare payments too? Lol
I had no idea that this was even a problem. It is very interesting to see how the changes in land usage have effected both people and the environment they live in.
14:57 Upper *Gotland* Dam reservoir? Gotland in Sweden? It must be a typo. It sounds like you're saying Gotvand. Godt Vand = Good water in danish. Hehe!
Fact: Cochise County, Arizona is much like Iran......they allowed *farmers to permanently damage a shared aquifer, putting basic livibility in the County at risk. *Cotton and alfalfa are the major crops. Not human food.
Very on point research and report. However one thing most people intentionally or not ignore is the size of Iran and population density near water resources. Iran has more renewable annual water resources than 11 middle eastern countries combined. The only two countries that have similar or more water resources than Iran are Turkey and Pakistan. Iran has more renewable water than Spain, and it is slightly less than Germany and France. If you were to check the FAO water resources report you will find that Iran is in fact very rich in Water. Living in Iran, I know we waste a lot of water compared to every other country that I have lived in. Iran's tap water has better quality than most bottled water in NA. Yet we use it to wash cars, water lawn and gardens or just use it as a means of carrier liquid to wash dirt and grime into sewage ways. Even all that accounts to 1-2% of water use. Our agriculture is worse than California and how much they waste water. Being located in warmer climates, our farmers can farm year around. They just use more water. Add all the depleted aquafers due to illegal wells to that, you have a crisis. Yet a crisis that can be completely reversed in 3-4 years just by implementing smart policies. Regenerative farming techniques and eliminating deep wells can reverse all the damage done very fast.
I like your answer and it seems rational. Whatever issue Iran has with it's water people aren't dying of thirst, crops are being grown, etc. The guy in the video admits that a big problem is that the irrigation method wastes a lot of water. Keeping that in mind it seems to contradict his assessment of it really being a crisis. What's your take on the water issues Iran has with Afghanistan? Just curious because that is the one water related thing that has some geopolitical implication and I'm surprised he didn't mention it
The water issue with Afghanistan this year was manufactured by a faction in Iran that needed a crisis to prevent opening a railroad between two countries. Afghanistan have had a dam on river that will eventually flow to Iran for 40+ years. Just 10 days prior to signing the railroad deal all of a sudden all media was flooded with the news about that dam. Once the signing was postponed, the whole thing stopped. The fact is nothing is as obvious at first. Much deeper digging is required. There is a strong pro-west faction in Iran that is not in power atm. They will do anything and everything to stop Iran from developing it's relations with regional countries. Ask yourself how come Iran relations with all Persian gulf Arab countries as well as central Asia went to shit during pro-west government years. China is by far the #1 trading partner of Iran. During Rouhani's presidency, 5 and half year Iran didn't have an ambassador in China. The Iranian ambassador to Russia was openly belligerent towards Russian government. Iran has zero relations with EU, yet Iran has 45 embassy and 70+ consulates in Europe.
what about the qanats man? it can be a solution for water management, can't it? so you can manage the distribution using qanats and stop the use of deep wells slowly as you increase qanats volume capacity.
You are right, but why spend money on an expensive infrastructure. It's not like people don't know what the solution is, it is just inconvenient. There are more modern methods. Paani foundation in India has done a wonderful job. The question is what will it take for people to do it.
@@mbuhplus7800 Yeah they just need more modern methods of irrigation. One method is you set up a system of piping that directly waters the root of the plant. Instead, they are just flooding the entire field and most of the water just evaporates, it's very wasteful. The only problem is the initial cost of putting in the pipe system. Then they'd just have to try and shut down the illegal wells. Problem solved.
Qanat means chanel in arabic, this means the first civilisations in Persia you mentioned didn't use this term "Qanat" and they must've had another term for it until the arabs came. Also, at 3:40, the papers show arabic letters which where introduced to Persian language only after Islamic conquest, meaning you can't call them Persian scientists, Umayyad or Abbasid scientists, calling them Persian is like calling Steve jobs Syrian. Thanks for the great video.
Iran's missfortune has been the rule of the Mullas. I remember in the 50s Iran was a modern and thriving society. Women were educated and respected. I hope that the Persians can get back to that after they dump the Theocracy that opresses them.
The Iranian government was a syncretic mixture of socialism and Islamic doctrines, which is ironic, because they also persecuted socialists and communists during the 1980s.
@@MrTylerStricker In fact, I see a few similarities between Iran and the anti-communist military dictatorships of Argentina and Chile during the 1980s.
industrial farming to this day 90% of farms in iran areold " flood irrigation(غرق ابی)" . an extremely inefficient way of using water. because water is subsidized by government,it is cheap, so nobody cares wasting it. if government pulled it's dick out of the market's ass and stop subsidizing ,farmers are forced to better use their water.
It's not the matter of care when the islamic gov kills and abducts people just for a video of them that happens to go viral. Management,seeking solution are all haram in the eyes of geat allah.allah is "akbar" allah is "greater" nothing can escape the greatness of allah
Another example of a country that throws away it's historically grown legacy for cheap quick growth. Just to find out that at the end of this road lies mega death.
Hi thank you for this comprehensive report with references and citations! If you could share your list of references in the video description too it would be a good help.
I would love to see more content on Iran! I feel like a lot of western oriented news outlets never talk about Iranian news outside of politics, and it's nice to understand more about Iran's other issues and situations. Also, your content is the swag!
I heard three issues. 1. you implied that surface irrigation is a cause of inefficiency. I have my BS and MS in agricultural engineering. My MS thesis was for modeling surface irrigation uniformity (CFD, at CSU). These models were checked by comparing the border irrigation done in Arizona. Commonly we got 95% uniformity on level borders. But, efficiency depends also on irrigation management, meaning how much water you put on. All irrigation methods can have poor efficiency, if not well managed. Three sources of losses: 1. runoff, 2. evaporation, 3. deep percolation. Runoff can be fixed with a tail water recovery pond or level borders. Deep percolation can be pumped up and re-applied, if the soil does not make it salty. Evaporation is a problem for all methods, even drip, except subsurface irrigation. 2. Israel uses desalinated water (from the Mediterranean Sea and Gulf of Aqaba) for all uses, including irrigating crops. Israel has efficient reverse osmosis systems, and efficient irrigation. 3. Has the Caspian Sea always been salty? Or, is it mostly from the Russians diverting water for irrigation on the north side? I was a foreign student at Pahlavi University, Shiraz Iran in school year 1974 - 75. I was in the college of agriculture, Irrigation department. During the winter break, I joined the soils department to visit the irrigated sugar cane fields near Abadan and Ahwaz. The political mismanagement of this development was sad. I was impressed on how two men with a shovel, bucket, rope, and crank dug a well near my mail box in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Maybe iran should focus on infrastructure instead of trying to build nuclear weapons. I mean, the first thing they should do is remove islam from their government.
Comes out right as a drought in the US upper midwest has caused salty water from the Gulf of Mexico to push up the Mississippi River towards New Orleans.
Whats insane about that, is there are a lot of people in the US who float the insane idea of pumping water from the great lakes to the west coast to make up for the desertification/aridification we have on the west coast. People are really short sighted about this kind of stuff. Also, to be clear, the US is no longer in a drought. We're doing through desertification. Drought's last a few years, not decades.
@@CRneu May I quote Wikipedia: "Drought is intrinsic to the natural climate of California.[6] Across the Californian region, paleoclimate records dating back more than 1,000 years show more significant dry periods compared to the latest century. Ancient data reveals two mega-droughts that endured for well over a century, one lasting 220 years and one for 140 years. The 20th Century was fraught with numerous droughts, yet this era could be considered relatively "wet" compared against an expansive 3,500 year history. In recent times, droughts lasting five to 10 years have raised concern, but are not anomalous. Rather, decade long droughts are an ordinary feature of the state's innate climate. Based on scientific evidence, dry spells as severe as the mega-droughts detected from the distant past are likely to recur, even in absence of anthropogenic climate change.[7]
@@CRneu BTW, Water from the Great Lakes to the West Coast is not such a great idea. But where there IS a massive excess of water at times is that which goes down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers (then down the Mississippi below Cairo, IL.) Speaking as a resident of the area, there are times we really wish some of that water could go to the SW US!
Iran seems only a point example of what overpopulation and irreflexive developism can do. The problems of Iran seem to be almost everywhere, at least in the semiarid regions: you mentioned the USA but you could have said Spain, Iraq, Egypt, Palestine/Israel, Libya's once famous "artificial river" and a very long etcetera. We're all living on borrowed time, time borrowed from Earth's sustainability (the ecological debt is a real thing) and this looks even worse than the Late Bronze Age Collapse, which is the closest that history can illustrate us with an example as far as I know.
@@gengar1187 - I fear the worst, really. Even the Pope spoke yesterday of the world going to a total disaster (I'm not Christian but when you're right, you're damn right).
@@LuisAldamiz It would be great if humanity can past through the crisis with population drop only but with technology and democracy intact. Personally only 1% of current humans population but with similar level technology and democracy would be great for Earth.
@@hikashia.halfiah3582 Democracy? What democracy? This current farce of pretending to live in democracies? I could vehemently go on and on about the state of democracies but let's sum it up: Parliamentary democracy controlled by the very few with little to no input from the population, is an elaborate farce, a cynical spectacle. Furthermore, it's at the core of it, a crisis of capitalism, the clash between stupidly irealistic growth models made up by neoclassical economists, their international institutions and ALL our governments who follow their instructions (They advise governments about what to do, literally); and between reality and the limit to growth. It's like a machine, going wild on its own, and either it will jam itself and explode as it spins faster and faster, or somehow, everybody accepts to dismantle/replace it. I am also appaled by your "With population drop only", whose population do you think will drop? The europeans? Americans from the US? No. It will be the ones who already consume nothing, the poorest among all the wretched creatures of this planet, that's who will die. Keep that in mind.
love the content. your absolutely amazing. can you plz do a video about currency value in iran. its a very complex topic that i can;t wrap my head around it. thanks for the hard work.
That which is unsustainable will eventually stop. As Iran's population relies on a combination of trading oil for food and drawing down groundwater, eventually the population will shrink or go elsewhere. Over time people will withdraw from drier and/or poorer areas that can't grow or pay for food. This will lead to political instability, but changing governments won't affect the underlying water scarcity.
Iran should take over Afghanistan we Pakistanis prefer peaceful Iran as our neighbor and not Afghanistan Afghans speak Dari which is almost same as Farsi at least you can communicate with them and teach them good behavior
A problem for Iran is that the country with the most skill in managing irrigation in a dry climate is Israel. I rather think the current Iranian regime would rather starve than take advice from Israel.
@@RT-qd8yl understand it was in jest. Eventually the country will have to find others who have the same issues,and ve together to find solutions . I'm in area that gets more more moister but still 22 inches a year
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
I'm Iranian and pretty much everything he said is on point. One thing I want to add is that building dams has also increased the rate of desertification. Around 20 years ago a river flowed around 10 kilometers from where I live. As long as this river flowed and it always did, several natural springs flowed water to lands that had little rainfall. When I was a child I remember how many trees and animals were around us. The land was alive and beautiful. So many different bird and animals. I used to go among the trees and just sit for hours in summers. Now a dam is keeping all of the river water for agriculture around the dam. The river no longer flows down river and the springs have long dried out. When the springs dried All the trees died. Birds didn't come back from migration and other animals are nonexistent. Land has become a desert. It is dead where there isn't a deep well to pump water. It's truely depressing.
I'm also kinda worried whether all those dams built now can be maintained in the future; something that was kinda missed in the video. Governments all over the world have a "build it and forget it" attitude, and a damaged/failed dams can do a lot of damage downstream.
Can you please help me understanding it - is it about damns, that made springs to stop flowing? Or is it rather lowered ground water (because fo water pumps) or even something else? It very surprising for me to hear damns cause desertification.
How is Iran?
Consider that the global warming could have contributed to this, not only the dams.
Where I live, I could enjoy winter sports when I was a kid, nowadays there's hardly any snow.
@@trueordruewhy is Iran
As an Iranian, I enjoyed the accuracy and excellent presentation of your video. Water scarcity has been a serious concern for decades and unfortunately, the regime does not value knowledge and expertise, only loyalty and obedience. That is one of the main reasons behind mismanagement.
then remove the regime....you lot are like 80 million and they're what few hundreds?
Amen
@@flowersofthefield340What does it mean?
Meritocracy is in decline all over the world. In the US, Trump's attack on "The Swamp" was really an attack on skilled, educated people actually getting things done, operating a government, doing what the agencies are there for. The Democrats are too busy hiring people based on ethnicity and oddness, to be bothered with elevating the most competent. Though, these are far from our largest issues: elections bought by campaign contributions, media making money by stirring up hate and fear, driving people into factions, and pushing each generation deeper and deeper into moral depravity, and now absurd propaganda, pork barrel spending waste, relentless mergers strangling consumers, and the government, resulting in absurd debt accumulation, NIMBYism, and some flavors of environmentalism, which don't allow enough infrastructure and housing to be built, leading to homelessness, traffic congestion (which does not merely slow people down, but rewards aggressive selfishness and dehumanization, while wasting energy), politicians which poison legislation to try to have it fail and at very great cost to the public (that is why healthcare is 50% more expensive per capita than in Switzerland, while life expectancy is 59th place). We have businesses make workplaces safe at great cost, but we have unsafe roads (poor lighting, not enough barriers separating oncoming traffic above 40 MPH and not enough sidewalks), and unsafe cars (cars are made to look good for the tests, but increase the speed of collisions above 40 MPH, and the cars become deathtraps, and make large numbers of permanently disabled people that can't work). Another of our big problems is that farm States have a lot of say in the Senate. This puts the interests of industrial farms above the health of the people. They use toxic fertilizers like bone meal, which has a lot of lead, they use small aircraft to plant rice which still use leaded fuel, and they only replace minerals whose absence reduces yields. There are no standards for nutrition from crops. Organophosphates should have been banned ever since scientists discovered that they rob our children of IQ points. Nearly all the baby food has lead in it. And just like Iran, farmers waste lots of water. We also have been suckered by the food industry into eating more and more foods with Advanced Glycation End-products (AGEs) in them. These are created by intense heat in the food factories. They want to make small crisp things, because they can make them fast, using incredible temperatures for a short amount of time. AGEs are also created by high speed blending in machines in factories or in the home. And they are made by fermentation, but mostly the concern there is "hard cheeses." The farmers and food industry is killing the population. The drugmakers want to just treat it, and make billions or trillions of dollars, even as life expectancy continues to fall. Medical mistakes, doctors and hospitals don't even have to report, kill over 250,000 people a year. How many maim? No one has even looked into that. 45.2 million Americans are disabled. The Chinese live almost 2 years longer than us now.
Which candidate for President cares about any of these REAL issues? None. No one can stand up against big agro, big media, the automakers (and their unions), defense contractors, the chemical industry, NIMBYs, realtors, big banks, big insurance and big pharma. There are no trustbusters, no one is even stopping mergers.
The biggest attack on Meritocracy, is gov’t hiring quotas, and allowing unqualified students into college, and denying Asians and whites that were qualified. The attack on the swamp was a reaction to DEI, DOJ corruption, FBI corruption, and depts like the education department that we don’t need. As Ronald Reagan said “ the frightening words were “I’m with the government and I am here to help”.
One comment about water use efficiency and surface irrigation:
Generally it is true that a larger share of water is lost to evaporation from the soil with surface irrigation, but the largest portion of that 65% ‘inefficiency’ is from water that goes down below the root zone and which percolates back into the underground aquifer. This water is theoretically available to be pumped again some years in the future.
What that means is that using more efficient means of irrigation (such as drip irrigation, which can be as high as 90-95% efficient), the number of farmable crop land doesn’t increase by the expected 2-2.5x, because a large percentage of that efficiency gain comes from sending less water past the root one.
Drip irrigation is almost always superior, but not by the amount that would be expected using simple math.
-A farmer in California who uses a variety of irrigation methods
is the size of the land also affecting watering technique for agriculture? because i've heard that in iran they have small pieces of land here and there, and so the types of watering techniques that they can use is very limited.
@@mbuhplus7800 surface irrigation (aka flood irrigation) is one of the cheapest ways to irrigate, and it’s very economical on small plots of land. In many cases, flood irrigation also doesn’t require electricity or any pressurization. The systems also don’t require filtration and are very low maintenance. But they use a lot of excess water.
If water is heavily subsidized or is just naturally very cheap (like if it’s being pumped from a river or very shallow well), the economics of a drip system can be difficult to justify just off of water savings. And especially for small plots, the “fixed costs” such as a pump and filtration system can’t be spread out over a larger area.
So if it’s the case that plot sizes are very small, and if water is subsidized as it says in the video, then those two factors would make it difficult to justify investing in an expensive irrigation system
As a homesteader in Missouri, where we have plenty of water, our policy has been to use drip irrigation from a rain capture system. We also extensively grow produce indoors to supply a local market, using drip irrigation. We don't treat our currently abundant water resources like the taps will never run dry. It's all about water management.
Water management everywhere is a mess and drought is becoming more than inevitable everywhere. Key fallacy missed nearly entirely wasn't just water and aquafer management ineptitudes in soils management and setasides, but the new salt flats do bring new recreational opportunities to the area?
brad, As you know, recharging aquifers is very difficult and assuming that excess water used in irrigation will simply percolate into the aquifer is problematic.
So far, as a hopeless docu-junky, I have come to the conclusion that Asianometry's organizational style and calm narrating voice is my favorite. I feel that producers with 10,000 views or more should be required to take a class from him. His contributions to contemprary computing history are particularly noteworthy as many of his chosen subjects are under-examined, under-digested periods with great bearing on our present order.
I didn’t recognise how significant this channel was, until I’d watched almost every video Asianometry has put out.
The level of insight into topics I never imagined I’d have educated my self on is astonishing.
A true gem.
I literally used his videos a lot at work. Some of the info he presents is very hard to get but when I dug deeper it was never wrong.
Sperg ❤
I agree the quality and comprehensiveness is great on this channel and it's not as click baity and over the top as many other channels
I love all the Asianometry mini-docs, but the water ones are especially my jam. Thank you for all the wonderful work you are doing with this channel, enjoyable and educational to the extreme.
吉祥
@yourt00bz please quit your lazy trolling. It has no benefit.
@yourt00bzlike DPRK 😅😅
I got really happy to see one of my favourite channels on UA-cam post about my country Iran. Unfortunately no good news ever come from Iran. Although it's expected considering our government and it's political situation.
Thank you Asianometry for educating us!
As an Iranian I must admit that this video was one of best videos about Iran's water issues I have seen in quiet a long time
Very factual and well researched
Well done 👏👏👏
Bro you guys need to get rid of socialism.
@@visitante-pc5zcbro you need to read some heckkin history lol
@@visitante-pc5zcyeahhhh, I'm sure sOcIaLiSm is Iran's greatest issue....
@@visitante-pc5zcsocialism is when I don't like it
@@visitante-pc5zc you vote for Trump, don't you? 🐷
as a former water regulator for government, i am thoroughly impressed as to not only the amount of information you managed to research and pack into 20 min, but also the quality of your presentation, and finally, more importantly, how you convey the message. Well done!
Thank you for your consistently insightful and precise videos. As an Iranian, I can validate the issues and analyses presented. However, there have also been grievous industrial decisions. For instance, the establishment of steel, cement, aluminum, and other water-intensive factories in provinces ill-equipped for such industries. This has led to the diversion of crucial rivers and the depletion of ancient reservoirs and lakes through pipes and subterranean tunnels. Within a mere four decades, this has wreaked havoc on our ecosystem. While our history spanning five millennia has taught us resource management in the Iranian plateau, the recent missteps serve as a stark lesson for humanity. It underscores how short-sighted leadership can push an ancient civilization to the precipice of collapse in just 40 years.
Make Iran Persian Again
This isn't because of the iran goverment tho, this happening all over the world
More of these water or other general resource videos (like agriculture)please. I love them. Keep up the great work!
Minor nitpicking: Qajar is pronounced with a hard "j" in Persian unlike Spanish
I was in Iran for the very first time in my life last week, and was saddened to see how the number of trees has plummeted in Valiasr Street or what was once known as Pahlavi Street in Tehran, from 24,000 in the 40s, to around 7000-8000 today, all thanks to water and soil mismanagement. My Iranian friend, who happens to be an environmental scientist as well, informed me how the natural water-flow networks have been destroyed, and how the water and soil is contaminated. Not to mention air pollution, poor construction methods, leading to a rise in the number of rats, which damages the roots of the trees, along with the lack of exposure to sunlight, due to high-rise buildings nearby.
She showed me pictures of her grandparents in the area from the 50s, and a number of aerial pictures of this around 18km street, from the 80s all the way to last year, 2022. It was depressing. Not to mention the disasters in other parts of the country. Mind you, this is a famous street in the nation capital. Just think about the destruction throughout the country. She also emphasized that the majority of people don’t treat trees properly as well. Which is another factor that she believes leads to the erosion of nature. She’s also worried that things will only get worse from here onwards, as the economy keeps deteriorating ever further. “If we couldn’t take care of our natural resources properly during the heyday of the oil age, how would we fair at the tail-end of its twilight?”
I only spent 3 nights in Tehran, unfortunately, and flew back home to Abu Dhabi. I would’ve loved to stay longer, and to have seen more of the country. But, I simply couldn’t. Hopefully, that would happen one day.
Oh, and I found young people such as myself, quite friendly, I daresay. I met my friend through Goodreads in June of 2016, and this was the first time we ever met in-person, after seven years and four months of knowing one another. Which is insane, given that Tehran is only a two hour flight away. 🤷♂️ 😅
Are these the young people who are gleefully parading around the streets celebrating the murders of 600 civilians in Israel. Such lovely peaceful harmless welcoming people!
@@occamraiserResearch a bit about Iran and it's political situation. The average Iranian would not do such thing. The problem arises with the government and the sycophant minority of its supporters who have all the freedom in the world to do whatever the fuck they want. Thousands of Iranians died just last year to try to fight and overthrow the government. Believe it or not Iranians are victims of their government as well. The youth in Iran aren't even religious no more, at least that's the case in big cities. A big portion of them are islamophobic even. Iranian politics is complex even for us Iranians so I can't expect foreigners to fully understand it but please don't spread hatred.
Trust me, average Iranians are sad about what happened in Israel and they are sick and tired of their government funding proxy wars and making the region unstable. Specially since they're struggling to make ends meet with their daily lives and after all it's their tax/oil money.
Very well-said. Bravo 👏 I didn’t even want to indulge that person’s hatred and self-evident ignorance. Especially, when bringing up something that has nothing to do with this video or my comment. Which goes without saying, that the person is clearly disturbed, and would like people to accommodate his engagement farm 🤷♂️
@@TheMaldingZucchini thanks for the sane reply to hate.
How is the water management in Abu Dhabi ?
Egypt vs Ethiopia, Iran vs Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan vs Tajikistan.
The 2020s might be the start of the water wars we feared would happen.
USA vs Canada eventually? let's hope not. D:
Indeed: wars, revolutions, mass migrations... collapse of all semblance of social order and prosperity.
We're collectively living on borrowed time: the ecological damage is massive already, I fear something at least as bad as the Late Bronze Age Collapse, which destroyed civilizations and erased whole nations from the face of Earth. Take Egypt for example: before it was a superpower, after it could barely stand independent anymore and soon it became nothing but a coveted province for others to conquer. And it wasn't the unluckiest one, what happened to the Ausones, the Trojans, the Hittites or the once prosperous Syrian city of Ugarit?
@@LuisAldamiz I just hope human civilization keep its technological level and democracy intact. Even 1% of human survive past 200 years later with technology and democracy intact is really great.
@@hikashia.halfiah3582 - IDK, I want to be optimistic but the logical outcome of such a massive eco-catastrophe in our reality seems to be total nuclear war, after things spiral out of control. When the choice is dying of thirst or playing nuclear Russian roulette, most will choose the latter... and when you play nuclear Russian roulette often enough, nuclear armaggedon ensues.
And the chances of 1% surviving that are very slim. Some want to imagine that remote areas may survive nuclear winter but they ignore radioactivity...
Would it "only" be conventional war... then yes, some would survive and rebuild, but would it not be for nuclear deterrence, I'm sure we would have suffered several world wars already, each more catastrophic than the previous one. Without nukes the many horrors of the Ukraine War would be the much worse horrors of total global war... but the price paid is the risk of total extinction, something unthinkable 80 years ago.
Capitalism has unleashed the "productive forces" of Humanity but can it control them before such superpowers destroy the planet one way or another? Clearly not, because its driven by greed and short-term gain, it is competitive and not cooperative, it is predatory (growth = destruction) and not caring ward of the precious substrate we live on.
We stand at the red line of such unprecedented civilizational challenge that we can barely wrap our minds around it un understand what's happening. Yet we must, and not just understand but also something much more difficult: reign on the many troubles that our socio-economic misbehavior has caused, and we must do all that very fast, and we don't even know where to start even.
And yet most people, incl. the powerful, live day to day without such concerns because it's all so mindbogglingly scary that we feel powerless and adrift, ruled by socio-economic (and political) forces well beyond our capacity.
Probably our best hope is that the collapse is so fast and furious that there's not even chance of starting a nuclear war. Then the survivors will somehow rebuild from the ashes, hopefully having learned something.
@@takingbacktheplanet Heh. Maybe if Lake Superior dries up.
Similar problems in Morocco.
There are laws regulating wells, but they are not enforced. The land is littered with abandoned wells which are extremely dangerous.
People drill deeper and deeper.
Enforcement would hurt the poor. Could you tell a family or poor village to starve instead of exploiting that resource regardless?
But at the same time big agri complexes (owned by the king and his people quite often) would be untouchable anyway...
Climate change AND overexploited water resources will be a horrific duo.
At least Morocco ladies and men's are bloody good at football ⛳
I don't think Morocco's water problems are in any way comparable to the ABSOLUTE HORRORS that await those in the Middle East!
Climate Change coupled with TERRIBLE watergoverning is actually what gives the current abysmal state of affairs.
(Then again POPULATION BOOM in the middle of a hot desert is bound to create troubles!)
@@ABC-ABC1234the rich Gulf countries already have plenty of desalination water. It's the poor ones that can't afford it
@@millevenon5853 Unlike Saudi Arabia, Iran actually has mountains with snow and the north that isn't arid... And I don't know if you noticed but desalinated seawater lacks natural and vital minerals our body needs. This is why people in the Gulf often have conditions people in other parts of the globe don't have. Liver issues, bone issues due to reduced mineral intake etc. etc.
Woah dude, you knocked this one out of the park! I learned so much. This has to be one of your best videos so far
Thank you for continuing to crank out interesting and well-researched videos.
The TSMC comment was very fitting. In Taiwan, TSMC has had to slow production due to drought, so what do they do? Build a new plant in AZ. I'm still scratching my head over that decision, but of course cheap desert land is attractive I guess.
nope a swing state to get voters from purple state is a win to my crony friends in the county
They also produce military and 5g equipment which needs to be kept away from public view
They should have built that plant in, say, one of Arkansas wetter areas. Plenty of US areas have lots of water...
@@SpringIsBACKtech workers don't want to move there. They would rather live in Arizona which is close to California
In my country Brazil, water is abundant, so waste is immense. It's ironic to think how some countries have so much of this resource, and Iran has almost nothing.
Only oil and gas.
Is there a subject that you don’t know?
Why?
is there a subject one can't research in open sources*
They call this research.
Thats autism for you!
@@amandahugankiss4110what do you call it?
I love your tech episodes... but this 'much older technology' content really spoke to me! Great job.
It's always so sad to see those photos of disappearing lakes and seas. I recently listened to a video about the tensions between Iran and Afghanistan over water, but this definitely helped flesh out my understanding of the issue (not to mention teaching me a bit more about the modern Iranian government). Thank you for this.
God be with you out there everybody. ✝️ :)
I miss the rains down in Africa...
Toto.
@@MarkGrudtin this case it's nono rains down in Africa 😂
Conscise, through and factual. As an Iranian I appreciate your effort researching this brillian video about Iran's catastrophic management of water resources.
Anahita comes to mind after reading some of the Avesta. Now I understand why for Zarathushtis water was so important. At least they understood that there's must be a balance in nature for everything to exist.
One interesting thing about Iran's map is that its demographic distribution is almost 100% matches its annual distribution of rainfall pattern.
Isn't that normal for many countries? Cities are always on rivers, things are always built where there are more resources.
Short answer: No. Most humans settle around rivers, but those rivers are not always directly related to the rainfall.
(including countries like Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan)
I am excited that you are moving beyond East and South East Asia, though I do hope you'll make more videos about East Asian states and the policies they utilized during their high growth periods(and obviously technological/industrial progress )
You should do a video on desalination and the saudi city of riyadh. Its fascinating how you can have a megacity in an area with little water and so far away from sea
Money money money.
@@randomhuman5525 besides that
wait for diseases coming, lol
I'd watch that!
@@mohd8218 money money money
The city I live in here in Finland has 8 lakes in it if I remember right. That's almost as many lakes as the whole Iran has.
We got about 190 000 lakes here.
did you build those lake? lol
@yourt00bz Well, if I remember right, about 10% of the land area is open water with about 30% of land area being swamps. This place is extremely wet.
Iran has 22 lakes. I don't think I'd call that "almost 8." Besides, let's also take into account the size of the lakes. Urmia lake in Iran is one of the largest in the world, for instance. A few thousand of Finland's lakes would fit in it.
wait till you get sun for a change. it must be a b1tch living in finland when you see nothing but darkness 6 months out of the year, lol
@@lambert801 dadash these are europee-on trolls, lol
By "surface irrigated", I assume you mean traditional flood irrigation (ditches and gates). Things like center-pivot irrigation is generally much more water efficient and has the side effect of producing greater crop yields because of the elimination of over-irrigated and under-irrigated sections of a field.
A well-researched report! I've subscribed.
The number of wars that could have been averted by stable water and food is incalculable.
I mean no disrespect but that's the crux of the issue lol.
War is an adjustment process. Stable food and water or stable population level. Guys cant keep it in their pants SO some adjustment methods are necessary. Of course not just periodic wars. Then (before anyone else jumps in to mention it!) there is the issue of demographic age balance. PRC is adjusting for its successful era of one child policy. Now to see how they get on. Hopefully no unwelcome foreign interference. We wait and watch. So far no war there except in America's eyes.
the amount of wars us can avoid by solving on their own issues
Or it’s abundance of food and water that leads to increased appetite
Timely comment - Iran making moves as we speak 🎉
I must say, this video has added wealth of information about Iran. Excellent in depth analysis. Great work.❤
do you think you could make a video about exactly why semiconductor fabs haven’t been able to do large scale water reclamation yet? their water consumption seems to be crippling
All the newer TSMC febs can reclaim like 80% or more water. His also make couple video about feb water usage which include water reclamation.
He's talked about this. Fabs recover like 75% of their water, plus often purchase water reclamation for the region they're in. Intel is a net positive water influence in the areas their fabs are in. Disclaimer though, I work for intel. TSMC does similar things.
@@CRneu I have a question. In Jon's video, how much % of the information he presented is accurate in your field?
Add to that Singapore's New Water. 75 to 80 percent are reclaimed and recycled. Some are placed back to reservoirs . Some are returned backs directly to industries such as wafer fabs. Underground tunnels were created to store the water.
in costa rica we make some semiconductors we have intel among many others, i think one of the reasons they are exapndin here is because of water, at one point we will have to limit which companies enter this beatiful country. climate change is coming for all but some places will stand longer i hope my country is one of those at a karmatic level we deserve it hahah since we have conservation in our dna unlike many other nations.
A country so heavily dependent on "unnatural" water sources, should not antagonize its neighbours.
Iran is actually makings many allies. even their old enemies the Saudis are becoming friendly with them, why? because the Middle east has had enough of the west and israel pitting Arabs and Muslims against each other.
Have they though?
@@Conradlovesjoy Yes.
@@Conradlovesjoyjust ask Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen
Very interesting! This is something rarely talked about, but highly important; specially the water crisis in Iran which is unique.
I would like to point out a few things, first, many hellenistic reports say that Iran used to be highly forested in many parts (but not all) and even the todays more arid land used to have more forests. Major deforestation happened because of Mongol and Turkic ecological destruction on Iran, and many other parts of land they conquered.
I am not in anyway an expert on this subject, but I would liked to know your views on many river projects in Iran, like example Iranrud which would had built a river from the Persian gulf to the caspian and supposedly made major lakes in todays Iranian deserts. Such a plan might be overreaching, but smaller ones, special from the Persian gulf with large extensions and expansion of lakes would be something that might be interesting.
Another that you mention is Iranian over consumption. This is not just water in agricultural, but gas, food or anything else. It is insanely over consumped. I do not believe this is just because of subsiditation or centrally planned projects, but more to do with some parts of Iranian lifestyle that does over consume. Because of that I believe, as Iran is mostly centrally planned, Iran has to intervene and not just make agriculture more efficient, but reduce over consumption. Many other things like some over building projects, specially dams or buildings also needs to be regulated. But a lot has to do with the states willingness to act in this major crisis.
But I would really like to see a video on what could reduce water stress in the region.
A qoute from the former minister of agriculture from Wikipedia "the water crisis is the "main problem that threatens" Iran, adding that it is more dangerous "than Israel, USA or political fighting among the Iranian elite". If the water issue is not addressed, Iran could become "uninhabitable". If this situation is not reformed, in 30 years Iran will be a ghost town. Even if there is precipitation in the desert, there will be no yield, because the area for groundwater will be dried and water will remain at ground level and evaporate.""
If the Qanat system were revived and maintained, could this help eleviate the problem?
Subsidizing rice production in near desert conditions is a bad use of water resources.
it's not California Imperial Valley or even Central Valley bad. The vast majority of Rice grown in Iran is done in the wet and verdant Caspian sea plains; it's more the issue of systemic inefficiencies. With enough future development with more efficient water allotment and policy change; Iran could get themselves out of the issue and still be massive rice producers. However to the south in the actual deserts; things are not so certain, much as with the American Southwest.
I'm no hydrologist, but I very much doubt the qanats would do more than marginally help. The qanat tapped waters will otherwise flow to reservoirs. The qanats reduce evaporation. But with precipitation being seasonal, without reservoirs, most of the water would either have to be used in a short spurt (not practical) or be left to flow out to sea. Based on seasonal precipitation and evaporation being a problem with reservoirs, it sounds like Iran should forcibly pump excess seasonal waters back into the aquifers. That would address the evaporation and distribute the water to the reported ~800,000 wells (many being illegal). But as stated here, Iran fundamentally needs to better manage this resource.
@@gregparrott bro, whachu bin smokin? 6 states in us and entire south uk and nearly entire planet are having the same problem. why don't you use your genius there? guess where they're having the problem? exact pattern as iran, in the south, except california and utah are north but there is simply no solution when the rivers or waters flow south to a point and then dryland. you should try desalination and let me know if you live, which you won't, and i'll let iran know, lol
@@ariaspes3842 You should stick to music 'bro'. That might save you from making snide, presumptuous comments. I live in the west and have visited all of the western states in the last 3 years. I am quite aware of what you mentioned. I am also aware of the west's water shortages, land subsidence in California, as well as subsidence in China and India (thanks to both INSAR and GRACE satellites).
However, you completely missed the difference in SCALE. Despite California being near the tail end of the Colorado river, California remains the country's largest producer of agriculture. (Mexico is the terminus and receives ~10% of the Colorado river flow). Utah has a lot of desert, yet is building like crazy, including stupid things like lots of golf courses in a hot. dry desert. Just visit Hurricane and St, George to see how bonkers the growth is. EDIT: St. George is ranked as the nation's fastest growing metropolitan area...abcnews.go.com/US/st-george-utah-worries-water-supply-amidst-historic/story?id=98480501#:~:text=Drought%20has%20gripped%20the%20region,drought%20is%20still%20a%20concern.&text=The%20St.,nation's%20fastest%2Dgrowing%20metropolitan%20area.
And then there's Las Vegas. Need I say more? If you fly in, look down at the number of pools at private residences. (I think built-in pools have finally been banned for newly built homes.) So that's a start. Aside from the giant water displays, I find it grating that every hotel I've stayed at has shower heads that flow at SEVERAL TIMES the rate of my resource efficient ones at home. So much for conservation.
As for desalination, San Diego and Santa Barbara use it. Monterey has proposed one, and California has approved it, but I don't think funding has yet to be acquired. With strong conservation measures, they likely wouldn't even need it.
The scale of the problem is FAR worse in the Middle East.
My point, 'bro', is you need not be snide, and you need not be so presumptuous as to assume I know nothing of comparative water shortages.
@@ariaspes3842be miserable somewhere else, kid
one of the best channels out there. thanks
It's hardly economical to use desalinated water for *anything.* The countries that engage in desalination do it out of sheer desperation. (These are mostly autocratic petrostates.) If it ever became widespread practice, expect per-capita energy usage to go up by a lot. It'll only happen if and when the going prices of water are much higher than they have ever been historically. You'll know if that happens; there will be a big row over it. People in most countries are used to getting their water far below cost, to the point it's an afterthought.
If you have sunshine you can desalinate water, Israel desalinates water and recycles 95% of their water and has a thriving agricultural sector. All mussie countries are basket cases - without oil as liquid money all arab countries would be poor sheet-holes.
A few months ago, Peter Zeihan and other prognosticators said water would be the next scarce resource - not oil, not food, but water - and here we are. Africa, the ME, and Afghanistan are already fighting over water. China is ignoring its environmental problems. The West is even more focuses on climate change than water management. I live in California, and, while drought has been an issue for decades, I think were more “used to it” than taking it seriously.
You mix gross world overpopulation across the board, climate change raising the heat index, the fact that everyone has been sucking the ground water aquifers dry with little regulation for the past century and throw in the huge influx of demand on water from manufacturing, agriculture, and food production and it's pretty obvious where all the water is going. Too many people are literally pissing it away.
Droughts and wildfires are going to become the new normal every year from here on out and ground water is going to continue to disappear as quickly as the temperatures rise.
Just lovely...
Thankfully the west had a lot of snowfall last year and it seems another good winter will happen this year
most online 'prognosticators' are professional bullshit artists, especially zeihan and the people he commonly associates with. what's the saying, throw enough shit at the wall and some will stick? water being a source of conflcit is not some new groundbreaking discovery or prophecy, it's been a known problem and a cause of conflict among smaller underdeveloped nations for decades at the very least.
it's just like climate change; countries consistently fail to address the root of the problem. lakes, rivers, streams being knowingly polluted beyond belief or dried completely because of deregulation or plain ignorance and bad resource management.
Climate change is very closely tight to water management and scarcity. I’m really surprised that connection isn’t clear…
Iran is probably most interesting middle east country
*Persia 😘
@@OrwellsHousecat didn't the aryans arrive before all others or maybe Mesoptamia would be more apt
@@ydid687 mesopotania is an israeli propaganda for iran. southern iran is middle east, northern is central asia, lol
@@OrwellsHousecat They're the same.
@@ydid687 fake news
Potable water is increasing becoming a scarce resource throughout the world. I always thought Iran's belligerence problem will be its undoing, and it still may, but as much infrastructure that it builds to overcome their water problem, it won't be solved unless climate change gives it more water. Common sense tells us it should cut back on belligerence and concentrate more on water, but common sense in this world is a rare commodity. It seems that every country whose main money making resource is oil always runs into political problems that manage to ruin their economy.
It is called the "resources curse" - google it. Basically if you have resources that are easy money for small groups in society to appropriate the cash from (and oil is the classic resource for this) then those small groups will run the country for their benefit. It becomes a lot easier for individuals to get out of poverty by stealing things rather than by building things so governance at all levels becomes chronically bad whether those governments are leftwing, rightwing or religious. It is the story of the Middle East and much of Africa.
That's because it is easy to become dependent and lazy on a single big profit resource. Once instituted, that dependence is extraordinarily difficult to overcome. Consider how much trouble Saudi Arabia would be in if it had to depend on per barrel profits typical of the USA!
Thats what happened to venezula
@@frenchonion4595 and now Venezuela is threatening with a special military operation of their own
That’s what the Iranian Autocrats should be doing not “ preaching hatred and wars “
IF only....if only...Iran & Israel were friends! Water problem would be solved. For those who don't know, Israel has one of the best, if not the BEST water management systems in the world. From micro "drip" irrigation (saves up 75% of water) to state-of-the-art desalination plant. They did out of necessity (it's do or die like many desert nations) but today they're one of the leading experts on water management. But we're too busy "hating" each other over religion.
If only Israel agencies and mossad didn't paid all living costs of Iran's supreme leader before his arrival to Iran in paris and Iraq for 20 years. If only iran's revolution wasn't run by mossad and cia to engineer the perfect boogeyman.
desalinated water is bad for human consumptionon the long term .
@@rioluna6058 How so?
Qanat means Canal in English which comes from the Arabic word قناة
Oman has a similar but more advanced water system
Do you mind elaborating how the omani qanat are more advanced than the Irani ones?
@@sha29i the Omani Qanat irrigation system is called Falaj and it has been built with the same principles of the Persian Qanat but with the addition of it being self containing and doesn't allow for people to extract more water from it due to its reliance of the canals being inclines built into them to prevent extracting more water than what's designed to output and they also use natural underground pressure and sophisticated engineering to distribute the water equally to each farmland within the village. These systems are smaller than the Persian Qanat and have built-in constraints to limited population that their requirements grew steadily and slowly so it explains why they didn't run dry ancient times
this is an example of such system
ua-cam.com/video/_1hebGcD6bM/v-deo.htmlsi=z0QhXg0W2cgb2Q7z
@@desertblade1874 come on bro, 500bc persian empire (achaemenid-arabia) built those from india to egypt ffs, lol
@@desertblade1874 these seem to be open air canals. Much of the complexity of the Persian qanat is them being underground and the calculations needed to dig in the right place etc. Asked chatgpt how they compared and it thinks the omani ones are less complex in construction.
Tunneling on any scale is great science. Worth documenting and preserving. This system occurs pretty much worldwide. China and Europe included .
No modern nation can claim ownership of the principle.
It is good to compare and appreciate all such systems.
Would be nice to restore the Persian/ Iranian Quanat to former glory. Those few photographs were alluring.
FYI Qajar (قاجار) is pronounced "Kah Jahr", not "Kahar".
All thanks to Americans learning Spanish. I got to hear the absolutely horrendous word "maharaaha"😂
@@rutvikrslol in the philippines, many filipinos would also read maharaja as maharaha as a legacy of the past spanish orthography used centuries ago that is still alive in some placenames and surnames
I'm curious: if the qanats were to be reapired, would there be water flowing through them or the dams system would still have altered the water flow, permanently?
Fresh water is really becoming the next big resource race. No water means no life, after all, and the mismanagement of a nation's water is every bit as important as the way it manages its oil.
First, we got excellent TSMC stock advice - now front running info on a new WAR !
This channel is as close as I'll get to "inside information "
Thanks my Man ❤❤❤
I remember when former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blamed Israel for it's water woes. Claiming that they were using geoengineering to prevent it from raining.
Muslims have a long and storied history of blaming Jews for self-inflicted wounds (real and/or perceived).
I honestly want know what kind of drugs he was smoking during his presidency.
Thanks for doing a story on Iran. If you ever feel up to it, can you do a story on the Shah's 1953 return to power?
"Oh, you mean, shrinkage."
"Yes significant shrinkage."
"What do you mean, like laundry?"
As an iranian,thats true especially in the south eastern and southern part of Iran,other parts deal with water
I live in iran and I'm following your content for years now, we appreciate your videos about Iran
how is life like in Iran. Is this really as bad as they say?
How do I move to Iran?
@@hououinkyouma1458yes there are many economic and religious problems here
Most people don't believe in islam like they used to 50 years ago but the government (that has the power) still forces people to wear hejab (you can read about last year and what happened to mahsa amini)
But these aside we have economic problems our rial currency value has dropped 20 times over the last 6 years relative to us dollar we are not connected to international banks
Also we might be "islamic republic of iran" but when we choose a president it goes through so many filters that people that we can choose are not who we want at the end of the day also president in our country doesn't have full authority anyways because there is a "rahbar"(leader) that we can't choose
Here If someone deemed successful they would be able to migrate to another county because growing here as a person is close to impossible I think a mini documentary about this would be fun too
@@hououinkyouma1458 not really, but so many people can't tolerate regime actions and ideology and migrate to other countries, next year I'm going to apply for phd for us or canada too
@@Anomalyy666 come here for a few weeks you'll regret wanting to move here
Our people are usually nice to foreigners but you don't want to live here
Nice work! This was a very interesting watch/listen.
Very interesting program. When it comes to water, this part of the Middle East seems like an emerging basket case. It's neighbors to the east - Afghanistan and Pakistan, have had military skirmishes over Pakistan's construction of dams which limit the flow downstream, into Afghanistan. Both of those countries have the same issues as Iran - insufficient water and agriculture for a growing population, poor governance, regional fighting, depletion of water tables, and increasing temperatures. A lot of the same can also be said for Iran's neighbors to the west - Iraq, and even further west - Syria. Then, to the south, there's 'the land of sand' - Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the UAE. Barring their oil, these countries would fare even worse.
Sooner than later, Saudi Arabia's oil will run out, then if they haven't made the proper investments, they will become desert nomads again!
Dig ponds or canals with
4/5 ft depth.
Lay polythene at the bottom of the pond or canal.
Over polythene, put 1ft mud then preserve rain water.
Due to polythene below, water cannot go away.....
EXCELLENT REPORT WITH MANY EYE OPENING FACTS. It is shocking how incompetent and uncaring the Iranian regime has been.
San Francisco built a 269 km aqueduct and dam from the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne to San Francisco. It took from 1913 to 1934. But construction machinery has advanced since the age of the steam shovel.
Iran needs to learn from their most hated enemy, Israel. Israel knows how to farm efficiently, example
: Drip water irrigation.
Egypt is closer to Israel
old iranian videos show that. barefoot village of israel learned that from iran, idi0t. and iran doesn't steal water like israel does from palestine, lol
This is not about the topic of the video, but it hurt me when I saw how people drove on the road at around 6:20. I had no idea how much something like that would bother me.
They need to regulate the misuse of water, massively improve water irrigation practices, reduce ground water usage and switch to less water intensive crops.
Good luck convincing Iran’s water mafia
@@souvikrc4499 why aren’t you working? a working person doesn’t have hours to meddle in other people’s business. so you’re telling us that millions are homeless in your country but some fake news about iran is more important? Did you know that taxpayers pay for below poverty standards troll salaries and therefore wel-fare payments too? Lol
tell that to shortages in california vs nevada , arizona, vs new mexico , utah vs colorado, professor, lol
@@ariaspes3842 I know, CA and the Southwest is known for its messy politics around water rights.
The easiest way is to stop subsidies of water to farmers. Farmers are not stupid, they learn new tech quickly if there is $$ to save.
I had no idea that this was even a problem. It is very interesting to see how the changes in land usage have effected both people and the environment they live in.
Can you do an episode about Iraq’s economy, drought, and future oil and gas industry?
14:57 Upper *Gotland* Dam reservoir?
Gotland in Sweden?
It must be a typo. It sounds like you're saying Gotvand.
Godt Vand = Good water in danish. Hehe!
Yeah, it's called GotVand
Iran to click this as fast as possible
Fact: Cochise County, Arizona is much like Iran......they allowed *farmers to permanently damage a shared aquifer, putting basic livibility in the County at risk.
*Cotton and alfalfa are the major crops. Not human food.
Yes, but democratic nations have better (not perfect, of course) to fix damages.
Very on point research and report. However one thing most people intentionally or not ignore is the size of Iran and population density near water resources. Iran has more renewable annual water resources than 11 middle eastern countries combined. The only two countries that have similar or more water resources than Iran are Turkey and Pakistan. Iran has more renewable water than Spain, and it is slightly less than Germany and France. If you were to check the FAO water resources report you will find that Iran is in fact very rich in Water. Living in Iran, I know we waste a lot of water compared to every other country that I have lived in. Iran's tap water has better quality than most bottled water in NA. Yet we use it to wash cars, water lawn and gardens or just use it as a means of carrier liquid to wash dirt and grime into sewage ways. Even all that accounts to 1-2% of water use. Our agriculture is worse than California and how much they waste water. Being located in warmer climates, our farmers can farm year around. They just use more water. Add all the depleted aquafers due to illegal wells to that, you have a crisis. Yet a crisis that can be completely reversed in 3-4 years just by implementing smart policies. Regenerative farming techniques and eliminating deep wells can reverse all the damage done very fast.
I like your answer and it seems rational. Whatever issue Iran has with it's water people aren't dying of thirst, crops are being grown, etc. The guy in the video admits that a big problem is that the irrigation method wastes a lot of water. Keeping that in mind it seems to contradict his assessment of it really being a crisis. What's your take on the water issues Iran has with Afghanistan? Just curious because that is the one water related thing that has some geopolitical implication and I'm surprised he didn't mention it
The water issue with Afghanistan this year was manufactured by a faction in Iran that needed a crisis to prevent opening a railroad between two countries. Afghanistan have had a dam on river that will eventually flow to Iran for 40+ years. Just 10 days prior to signing the railroad deal all of a sudden all media was flooded with the news about that dam. Once the signing was postponed, the whole thing stopped.
The fact is nothing is as obvious at first. Much deeper digging is required. There is a strong pro-west faction in Iran that is not in power atm. They will do anything and everything to stop Iran from developing it's relations with regional countries. Ask yourself how come Iran relations with all Persian gulf Arab countries as well as central Asia went to shit during pro-west government years. China is by far the #1 trading partner of Iran. During Rouhani's presidency, 5 and half year Iran didn't have an ambassador in China. The Iranian ambassador to Russia was openly belligerent towards Russian government. Iran has zero relations with EU, yet Iran has 45 embassy and 70+ consulates in Europe.
what about the qanats man? it can be a solution for water management, can't it? so you can manage the distribution using qanats and stop the use of deep wells slowly as you increase qanats volume capacity.
You are right, but why spend money on an expensive infrastructure. It's not like people don't know what the solution is, it is just inconvenient. There are more modern methods. Paani foundation in India has done a wonderful job. The question is what will it take for people to do it.
@@mbuhplus7800 Yeah they just need more modern methods of irrigation. One method is you set up a system of piping that directly waters the root of the plant. Instead, they are just flooding the entire field and most of the water just evaporates, it's very wasteful. The only problem is the initial cost of putting in the pipe system. Then they'd just have to try and shut down the illegal wells. Problem solved.
Cheap Nuclear & Direct Solar parabolic array's would really take care of the problem of desalination plants.
Qanat means chanel in arabic, this means the first civilisations in Persia you mentioned didn't use this term "Qanat" and they must've had another term for it until the arabs came.
Also, at 3:40, the papers show arabic letters which where introduced to Persian language only after Islamic conquest, meaning you can't call them Persian scientists, Umayyad or Abbasid scientists, calling them Persian is like calling Steve jobs Syrian.
Thanks for the great video.
anti arab bias
Persian Word For Qanat is "Kariz"
Also Oldest Qanat Built Druing the Acheaminid Empire In Khurasan Region of Iran 🇮🇷
Iran's missfortune has been the rule of the Mullas. I remember in the 50s Iran was a modern and thriving society. Women were educated and respected. I hope that the Persians can get back to that after they dump the Theocracy that opresses them.
they wont . they have two armys and on thosethe bigger best equipped is the guards of the islamic revolution
13:43 iran may be the only country to declare jihad on agriculture & poverty without causing a suprise reaction😅
The Iranian government was a syncretic mixture of socialism and Islamic doctrines, which is ironic, because they also persecuted socialists and communists during the 1980s.
@@souvikrc4499 Funny how that always seems to happen... almost as if they're not actually communists. Strong echoes of Stalinist USSR.
@@MrTylerStricker In fact, I see a few similarities between Iran and the anti-communist military dictatorships of Argentina and Chile during the 1980s.
@@souvikrc4499 yes stronger parallels there, you're right
Nice video but why last picture of a field in Canada?
Anyone from Iran care to see what potential solution can be done for the water consumption and management in short terms?
industrial farming
to this day 90% of farms in iran areold " flood irrigation(غرق ابی)" .
an extremely inefficient way of using water.
because water is subsidized by government,it is cheap, so nobody cares wasting it.
if government pulled it's dick out of the market's ass and stop subsidizing ,farmers are forced to better use their water.
It's not the matter of care when the islamic gov kills and abducts people just for a video of them that happens to go viral. Management,seeking solution are all haram in the eyes of geat allah.allah is "akbar" allah is "greater" nothing can escape the greatness of allah
That was so interesting! Looking forward to the "pissed-off" people episode.
Another example of a country that throws away it's historically grown legacy for cheap quick growth. Just to find out that at the end of this road lies mega death.
Hi thank you for this comprehensive report with references and citations! If you could share your list of references in the video description too it would be a good help.
I would love to see more content on Iran! I feel like a lot of western oriented news outlets never talk about Iranian news outside of politics, and it's nice to understand more about Iran's other issues and situations. Also, your content is the swag!
Why western news should talk about internal news of iran when Iran's news outlet should cover internal news
@@trueordrue what? lol
@@trueordruebecause the Iranian government goes after news outlets that criticizes them
@@souvikrc4499 cheap trolls talking nonsense, lol
@@trueordrue because Iran's english news outlets are usually controlled by the state
I heard three issues.
1. you implied that surface irrigation is a cause of inefficiency. I have my BS and MS in agricultural engineering. My MS thesis was for modeling surface irrigation uniformity (CFD, at CSU). These models were checked by comparing the border irrigation done in Arizona. Commonly we got 95% uniformity on level borders.
But, efficiency depends also on irrigation management, meaning how much water you put on. All irrigation methods can have poor efficiency, if not well managed.
Three sources of losses: 1. runoff, 2. evaporation, 3. deep percolation.
Runoff can be fixed with a tail water recovery pond or level borders.
Deep percolation can be pumped up and re-applied, if the soil does not make it salty. Evaporation is a problem for all methods, even drip, except subsurface irrigation.
2. Israel uses desalinated water (from the Mediterranean Sea and Gulf of Aqaba) for all uses, including irrigating crops. Israel has efficient reverse osmosis systems, and efficient irrigation.
3. Has the Caspian Sea always been salty? Or, is it mostly from the Russians diverting water for irrigation on the north side?
I was a foreign student at Pahlavi University, Shiraz Iran in school year 1974 - 75. I was in the college of agriculture, Irrigation department.
During the winter break, I joined the soils department to visit the irrigated sugar cane fields near Abadan and Ahwaz. The political mismanagement of this development was sad.
I was impressed on how two men with a shovel, bucket, rope, and crank dug a well near my mail box in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Maybe iran should focus on infrastructure instead of trying to build nuclear weapons.
I mean, the first thing they should do is remove islam from their government.
13:37 the Ministry of Construction Jihad sounds like an Islamicized version of the Soviet Union’s Workers’ Shock Brigades (Udarnik).
Comes out right as a drought in the US upper midwest has caused salty water from the Gulf of Mexico to push up the Mississippi River towards New Orleans.
Whats insane about that, is there are a lot of people in the US who float the insane idea of pumping water from the great lakes to the west coast to make up for the desertification/aridification we have on the west coast. People are really short sighted about this kind of stuff.
Also, to be clear, the US is no longer in a drought. We're doing through desertification. Drought's last a few years, not decades.
@@CRneu May I quote Wikipedia: "Drought is intrinsic to the natural climate of California.[6] Across the Californian region, paleoclimate records dating back more than 1,000 years show more significant dry periods compared to the latest century. Ancient data reveals two mega-droughts that endured for well over a century, one lasting 220 years and one for 140 years. The 20th Century was fraught with numerous droughts, yet this era could be considered relatively "wet" compared against an expansive 3,500 year history. In recent times, droughts lasting five to 10 years have raised concern, but are not anomalous. Rather, decade long droughts are an ordinary feature of the state's innate climate. Based on scientific evidence, dry spells as severe as the mega-droughts detected from the distant past are likely to recur, even in absence of anthropogenic climate change.[7]
@@CRneu BTW, Water from the Great Lakes to the West Coast is not such a great idea. But where there IS a massive excess of water at times is that which goes down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers (then down the Mississippi below Cairo, IL.) Speaking as a resident of the area, there are times we really wish some of that water could go to the SW US!
Awesome video 😇 loved it! Thank you so much
Nice video
9:45 the graph shows it's doubled in the last 40 years - not twenty years
Iran seems only a point example of what overpopulation and irreflexive developism can do. The problems of Iran seem to be almost everywhere, at least in the semiarid regions: you mentioned the USA but you could have said Spain, Iraq, Egypt, Palestine/Israel, Libya's once famous "artificial river" and a very long etcetera. We're all living on borrowed time, time borrowed from Earth's sustainability (the ecological debt is a real thing) and this looks even worse than the Late Bronze Age Collapse, which is the closest that history can illustrate us with an example as far as I know.
Ak, we shall see! Hopefully we can muddle our way out but you very well may be correct
@@gengar1187 - I fear the worst, really. Even the Pope spoke yesterday of the world going to a total disaster (I'm not Christian but when you're right, you're damn right).
@@LuisAldamiz It would be great if humanity can past through the crisis with population drop only but with technology and democracy intact. Personally only 1% of current humans population but with similar level technology and democracy would be great for Earth.
@@hikashia.halfiah3582 Democracy? What democracy? This current farce of pretending to live in democracies? I could vehemently go on and on about the state of democracies but let's sum it up: Parliamentary democracy controlled by the very few with little to no input from the population, is an elaborate farce, a cynical spectacle.
Furthermore, it's at the core of it, a crisis of capitalism, the clash between stupidly irealistic growth models made up by neoclassical economists, their international institutions and ALL our governments who follow their instructions (They advise governments about what to do, literally); and between reality and the limit to growth.
It's like a machine, going wild on its own, and either it will jam itself and explode as it spins faster and faster, or somehow, everybody accepts to dismantle/replace it.
I am also appaled by your "With population drop only", whose population do you think will drop? The europeans? Americans from the US? No. It will be the ones who already consume nothing, the poorest among all the wretched creatures of this planet, that's who will die. Keep that in mind.
@@hikashia.halfiah3582maybe see a doctor about your pent-up aggression. it's not normal to want 99% of everyone gone.
10-20%, tops...
/s
Excellent as usual , thanks
"iran has become one of the biggest damn building countries"
Dam!
Well, dam!
love the content. your absolutely amazing. can you plz do a video about currency value in iran. its a very complex topic that i can;t wrap my head around it. thanks for the hard work.
Seems like a terrible problem to have when you're about to get wrecked on several fronts.
15:44 have seen stupid decisions, but build this bridge on a precious drinkable water lake definitely wins 👏
3:07 stagnant water underground for years? Is that healthy?
Goddamm this is some good shit
Video or the death of Iran?
Wasn't there a vapor trapping method they used in regions of Iran?
That does go a long way to explain why every half a year or so Iran blames Azerbaijan or Israel for stealing their rainclouds.
That which is unsustainable will eventually stop. As Iran's population relies on a combination of trading oil for food and drawing down groundwater, eventually the population will shrink or go elsewhere. Over time people will withdraw from drier and/or poorer areas that can't grow or pay for food. This will lead to political instability, but changing governments won't affect the underlying water scarcity.
Iran should take over Afghanistan we Pakistanis prefer peaceful Iran as our neighbor and not Afghanistan
Afghans speak Dari which is almost same as Farsi at least you can communicate with them and teach them good behavior
not gonna happen , afghanistan is now pakistans problem
Keep dreaming
How the shrinking of lake affects the level of salinity? Can someone explain?
Salt Water evaporating and leaving behind salt increases the salinity of whatever water is left behind
A problem for Iran is that the country with the most skill in managing irrigation in a dry climate is Israel. I rather think the current Iranian regime would rather starve than take advice from Israel.
You are probably correct
From the video it is very clear that it is mismanagement situation induced by the government
@@DaBoosterThen another count would be the US. Maybe ask the Australia?
@@bobflatman278 We won't let Australia help them either
@@RT-qd8yl understand it was in jest. Eventually the country will have to find others who have the same issues,and ve together to find solutions . I'm in area that gets more more moister but still 22 inches a year
Is it as bad as the water problem in Flint Michigan
flint is just one city in the USA here we are talkig about a whole country your comparison doesnt make sense is like comparing an ant to an elephant
The connection between water (and land) issues and the rise of the Islamic Revolution is interesting, among other things.