Due to the corrupt administration of the Iranian Islamic regime, Iran is struggling with many crises, which the environment and water crisis are of the most important of them. Today, due to the unscientific and corrupt management in many parts of Iran, environmental problems have become vital and are going to be no longer manageable.
The most critical and urgent environmental and water crisis, or to be more precise, disaster in Iran is the case of Urmia Lake in South Azerbaijan (Northwest of Iran).
According to many scientific researches and reports*, a small part of the Urmia Lake’s drying up is due to global warming, but more of it is due to wrong water resources management. According to experts, the drying up of Urmia Lake, which contains billions of tons of salt, will force millions of people to migrate and will cause hundreds of cities, towns and villages to be emptied over the years, especially the city of Tabriz, the center of South Azerbaijan. Because people will not have the opportunity to live in that region due to desertification and diseases. This means a great humanitarian crisis in Southern Azerbaijan and regions that are the target of migration.
Another aspect of the situation is that, based on the data, the Iranian Islamic regime, as in other issues, applies ethnic and geographical discrimination in the measures taken against the environment and water crisis. It focuses on the central provinces of the country and does not take adequate preventive measures in non-Persian ethnic regions. In fact, in some cases it uses environmental crises as an element of pressure against ethnic groups to forces them to migrate, especially in the Arab region of Ahvaz and Southern Azerbaijan. Many human rights, civil, political and environmental activists of South Azerbaijan think that the Iranian Islamic regime’s not being willing to take effective measures against the drying up of Urmia Lake is related to the regime’s desire to change the ethnic structure of the region.
We, as South Azerbaijani organizations, hereby call out to international organizations and the world public opinion once again;
There is an environmental disaster in Southern Azerbaijan, and the environmental disaster will turn into a humanitarian crisis in the coming years. Undoubtedly, the victim of this environmental and humanitarian crisis will be not only Southern Azerbaijan, but also other provinces of Iran and the countries of the region. For this reason, we call on the international organizations and the world public opinion to put pressure on the Iranian regime and to demand it loudly from Iran to put aside its discriminatory policies and to take effective measures regarding the Urmia Lake. Otherwise, it will be too late to prevent the environmental and humanitarian crisis in South Azerbaijan and neighboring regions.
Azerbaijan Center Party
Azerbaijan National Resistance Organization
Azerbaijan Student Movement – AZOH
South Azerbaijan Democratic Party
Addressed to:
UNEP
WWF
Greenpeace
Climate Foundation
Global Footprint Network
Friends of the Earth
Earthjustice
Green Cross International
* References:
https://wedocs.unep.org/handle/20.500.11822/40891
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenvs.2021.603916/full
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9719577/
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40333-023-0054-z
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320587612_The_Investigation_of_Lake_Urmia_Drying_Trend_and_Its_Important_Consequence_on_the_Surrounding_Settlements
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