July 19, 2019
With the mounting water crisis, the government is now planning to revive Iran’s historic qanat water system, something the regime has generally brushed aside in recent decades as old-fashioned technology.
For more than 2,000 years, qanats—simply underground tunnels built with modest inclines—have been used to channel water from the mountains to the plains.
Agriculture Minister Mahmud Hojjati said June 25 that the revival of qanats “is an indication that they [undefined] are finally paying attention to this issue after decades.”
Despite heavy rains in recent months, officials are still concerned with water scarcity and plead for judicious consumption, especially in the agriculture sector where most of Iran’s water—about 90 percent—is consumed, and much of it wasted.
Qanat is the generic term for an ancient environmentally sustainable water harvesting and conveyance technique believed to have originated in Persia in the early first millennium BCE.
The qanat system consists of a network of underground channels that transport water from aquifers in the highlands to agricultural lands at lower altitudes by gravity.
While qanat systems cannot replace modern advances in water resources management, they still have a role to play as a sustainable groundwater management tool, Hojjati said.
There are almost 34,000 qanats in the country, which, if revived, can help curb water shortages in many dry regions like the provincial capital city of Yazd that is believed to be the hottest region north of the Persian Gulf and is Iran’s driest metropolis.
A few decades ago, residents of the parched province relied heavily on qanats to meet their daily water needs.
Many qanats have fallen into disrepair or have dried up. Many of those that remain are threatened by silt sedimentation and the shortage of skilled people for managing the system.
