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WATER POLITICS

Via the Circle of Blue, a more detailed look at Iran’s recently announced planned water transfer project:

Last week, Iran started construction on a $US 1.5 billion project that will transfer water from the Caspian Sea to the country’s arid central region.

It’s not the first time — other major water transfer projects move 2,110 million cubic meters (557 billion gallons) of water each year into this water-scarce region from basins where the resource is more abundant, according to a 2005 report by the National Research Council. The report also stated that population growth and the uneven distribution of water in Iran will likely create chronic water shortages, with the annual average per capita volume of renewable water estimated to drop from 2,000 cubic meters (528,000 gallons) to below 1,000 cubic meters (264,000 gallons) by 2025.

But Iran’s water transfer projects pale in comparison to China’s $US 62 billion South-North project, which Circle of Blue reported on last year. The feat is expected to transport 44.8 billion cubic meters (11.8 trillion gallons) of water annually from the southern Yangtze River Basin to dry regions in the north by 2050.

Other water transfer ideas floating around include a proposed pipeline from Tasmania to South Australia — capable of carrying 500 million cubic meters (132 billion gallons) of water. Meanwhile, some in the United Kingdom are calling for Welsh water to be sold and transported to drought-hit England, as my fellow Circle of Blue reporter Brett Walton reported at the beginning of April.