It is not just North America suffering from suffocating heat waves. It is happening everywhere.
The heatwave situation in Iran is so grim that the government has declared Wednesday and Thursday government holidays due to the "unprecedented heat." The government's Ministry of Health has ordered hospitals nationwide to be highly alert. In southern Iran, a temperature reading of 123 F was recorded. Even higher temperatures are likely this week.
Drought and heat have taken a toll over recent years, and the country of 88 million is experiencing power outages and grid failure due to the energy-intensive air conditioning use necessary to keep people alive.
Iran has announced Wednesday and Thursday this week will be public holidays because of "unprecedented heat" and told the elderly and people with health conditions to stay indoors, Iranian state media reported.
Many cities in southern Iran have already suffered from days of exceptional heat. State media reported temperatures had this week exceeded 51°C in the southern city of Ahvaz.
Government spokesman Ali Bahadori-Jahromi was quoted by state media as saying Wednesday and Thursday would be holidays, while the health ministry said hospitals would be on high alert.
Temperatures are expected to be 39 C in Tehran on Wednesday.
These temperatures with drought in an already water-stressed ecosystem are increasing in frequency and duration. The Middle East Institute reports on the worrying trend that heat is driving seasonal internal migration, which took off after exceptional climate impacts that exacerbated a long-term displacement trend in 2022. At other times it was flash flooding from an increasing number of storms that forced people to leave their homes. An estimated 41,000 in 2021 left due to land degradation, flooding, drought, and sand and dust storms. Climate change will increase quickly, turbocharging the impacts and driving even more to evacuate. NASA has found the country will be uninhabitable by 2050. Considering how quickly the crisis has accelerated in the last few months, it may arrive sooner.
Migrants generally move to areas where climate conditions are better, yet still experience environmental decline. In Sistan and Baluchistan’s Chabahar County, along the Gulf shores in southeastern Iran, an increasing number of people have been forced to move as a result of climate change and now live on the margins of towns. As drought strikes southern Iran, migration to northern parts of the country has become more common as well.
Migration trends are reshaping the country and as some regions become depopulated, this may even have implications for national security. Border areas in particular are essential to maintaining Iran’s territorial integrity and unified geographic structure, but large-scale migration driven by climate and economic factors has left many of them devoid of inhabitants.
People living in Iran’s vast central desert face swirling winds that destroy the surface of the soil, placing stress on the region’s underground water resources and prompting many to migrate either to the Caspian Sea region in the north or the capital. Tehran in particular has been a major magnet for migrants. Over the past two decades the city has added an estimated 200,000-250,000 people per year, and this rapid population growth has resulted in unbalanced urban development, making the capital ever more congested and difficult to live in. According to a city official, Tehran’s population is growing by 1.7% annually and will reach 15 million in two decades’ time. Other figures put the annual increase in the city’s population even higher, at around 600,000, driven largely by internal migration. Statistics released last year suggest nearly two-thirds of Tehran’s population (62%) was born outside the city, while its suburbs are home to a population equivalent to that of 15 other provinces combined.
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Iran’s recent experience with drought, the worst in the past five decades, further intensified internal displacement. Water-induced migration is a major challenge for Iran, a country in which 75% of its nearly 88 million people live on less than 40% of its land, mostly in the water-rich areas of the west and in the north. Half a century ago, 60% of Iran’s 30 million people lived in those same areas. Accelerated desertification and deforestation in these regions, along with damaging environmental practices and high water consumption patterns, are stressing underground water resources and potentially causing water bankruptcy on the local level.
In southwestern Iran, including the province of Khuzestan, chronic water shortages are the result of a shift in agricultural patterns toward more water-intensive crops, carried out as part of an effort to achieve food security. This was combined with a ramping up of dam construction and a diversion of water toward industrial projects, including steel plants, in other parts of the country.
The result is climate wars, whether it's internal or external. There have been skirmishes with Iranians encroaching on Afghan territory for water as crops wilt and die.
The reasons for the clashes are still unknown but the shooting at the border post between the Afghan province of Nimroz and Iran’s Sistan-Baluchistan province comes as Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi earlier this month accused Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers of restricting the flow of water to Iran’s eastern regions in violation of the 1973 treaty.The New York Times writes that two provinces having a combined population of 2 million will have to leave their homes and move within months. It could happen by September 2023.
Members of Iran’s parliament said in an open letter last week that Sistan and Baluchistan’s water reserves would be exhausted by mid-September, leaving the provincial population of about two million with little choice but to leave.
“We will see a humanitarian disaster,” warned the letter, signed by 200 lawmakers.
Like other Iranian officials, they accused Afghanistan’s Taliban administration of restricting the river’s flow in violation of a 1973 treaty that divided the rights to its waters, and they demanded that the Taliban reopen the spigot. Afghanistan, however, says there is simply less water to send.
Iran doesn't have friends, and their youth despise the ruling class due to their brutal crackdown on peaceful protests. Their economy shatters due to sanctions, drought, and flash floods. But the regime is doing nothing to not only fight climate change or have plans or policies in place to deal with climate emergencies.
As one of the world’s top 10 emitters of greenhouse gases, Iran is contributing to the climate crisis taking a mounting toll on human rights around the globe. Most of its emissions are from the energy sector: 94 percent of Iran’s electricity comes from fossil fuels. Iran is the eighth largest producer of crude oil and the third largest producer of natural gas but also has significant renewable energy potential. Energy costs are heavily subsidized, one of the factors leading to a high energy intensity per capita. Iran has taken few steps to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, regularly citing international sanctions as a barrier to transitioning towards cleaner energy. Iran is one of six countries that has not yet ratified the Paris Agreement.
There are longstanding concerns across Iran, and Khuzestan in particular, over mismanagement of water resources and pollution from oil development. For decades, environmental experts have warned that development projects in oil-rich Khuzestan, including the construction of hydroelectric dams, irrigation schemes, and water transfers to neighboring provinces are causing environmental harm and leading to water shortages affecting a range of rights.
Climate change is a serious threat to Iranian livelihoods including from increased temperatures, more frequent and intense forest fires, dust storms, inland flooding, and sea level rise. In 2021, droughts exacerbated long-standing pressures on water resources. The increasing frequency and intensity of droughts is projected to continue, diminishing agricultural productivity compromising food security.