07112025 (Aujourd'hui, l’Iran ; demain l’Europe ?)

Je vous invite à lire cet article, qui date du mois d'août, en entier.

Les paragraphes que j’en ai extraits ci-dessous doivent nous inciter, d’une part à tenir compte de la situation particulière de l’Iran, mais d’autre part à ne pas nous dire qu’il s’agit d'une situation sans rapport avec la nôtre en France : les infrastructures de captation de l’eau qui provoquent un déséquilibre hydrologique généralisé, ce sont les mégabassines « comme chez nous » ; l’appauvrissement des sols par l’agriculture industrielle, c’est pareil ici ; la production agricole inadaptée et non respectueuse des ressources, on connaît ; la confiscation de l’eau par des grandes entreprises privées soucieuses de rentabilité à court terme, merci aussi...

 

 

Iran’s groundwater reserves, once a lifeline for farmers and cities, have been recklessly depleted. In many regions, wells now reach only dust. The land is sinking. Crops are failing. Entire villages have been abandoned. This isn’t just a natural drought.

For thousands of years, Iranians understood the balance: Never draw more from an aquifer than nature could replenish. That wisdom, once central to survival, has been buried under decades of short-term thinking and political negligence. What we’re witnessing now is the direct result of those choices. A system built on exploitation has quite literally run itself into the ground.

With groundwater depletion comes land subsidence. The spaces between soil particles, once filled with water, are now filled with air—and air can’t bear the weight of the layers above. As a result, compaction turns into collapse. That’s why so many cities in Iran today are sinking.

Although corruption lies at the heart of Iran’s water crisis, the problem goes far beyond dam contracts and insider deals. It’s also about how water is used, and wasted, every day. If the citizens of Cape Town, South Africa, managed to cut their daily water use to just 50 liters (about 13 gallons) per person to avoid Day Zero—the point at which a city’s taps would run dry and residents would need to queue for water rations—then why are residents of Tehran still consuming more than 250 liters per day—especially when water-intensive air conditioners dump tens of liters daily during the hottest months?

Cities such as Tehran have sprawled far beyond what local water sources can support. Overconsumption, leaky infrastructure, and unplanned urban growth have pushed the system to the brink.

Meanwhile, agriculture, the biggest water consumer, is stuck using outdated, inefficient methods. Flood irrigation, the cultivation of water-intensive crops such as sugar beet and rice in arid regions, and politically connected landowners have drained aquifers for profit rather than food security. To make matters worse, some research indicates that roughly 35 percent of agricultural products go to waste as a result of poor storage, weak distribution systems, and lack of planning. Instead of modernizing farming or managing demand, the state continues to look the other way.

While Iranians have long been experts at recharging aquifers and maintaining balance in the water table, the government continues to pour money into multimillion-dollar megaprojects that do the opposite. These projects, dams, diversions, and transfers end up killing rivers, draining lakes, drying out wetlands, and severing the natural connection between surface water and aquifers. Without that interaction, the aquifers die, too. What once sustained life is now being dismantled in the name of progress.