WATER SHORTAGES IN LEBANON AFGHANISTAN AND IRAN AFGHANISTAN

WATER SHORTAGES IN LEBANON, AFGHANISTAN, AND IRAN

AFGHANISTAN • Only 48 percent of Afghanistan’s population have access to safe drinking water and only 37 percent use improved sanitation facilities - with serious health implications, especially for children • some parts of the country are physically water scarce, most people lack access to safe water because of inadequate infrastructure and poor management rather than insufficient resources • three decades of turmoil in Afghanistan, water supply infrastructure has been neglected or destroyed • 73 percent of the population relies on improvised and inadequate facilities to supply water, while water sources are becoming increasingly polluted and overexploited in places like Kabul

IRAN • World Resources Institute ranked Iran as the world's 24 th -most water-stressed nation. • Drying lakes and rivers, declining groundwater resources, land subsidence, water contamination, water supply rationing and disruptions, forced migration, agricultural losses, salt and storms, and ecosystem damages are the modern water-related issues of a nation which was once recognized as the pioneer of sustainable water management • Iran’s population almost doubled within the last two decades of the 20 th century, right after the Islamic Revolution of 1979 • inefficient agriculture, which heavily relies on irrigation and consumes most of the country’s limited water resources, mainly due to its oil-based economy and

LEBANON • For the third consecutive year Lebanon has had less-than-average rainfall, likely leading to water shortages for many throughout the summer of 2016 • mosque has its own well, which allows it to pump water directly from the aquifers that cross the Lebanese underground. Once filled, the trucks will start going through the city to supply hundreds of homes and shops. • In a normal year, the water trucks do not appear until September, but this year they have started working even before summer because of the severe drought currently affecting Lebanon. • presence of more than one million Syrian refugees fleeing the war, exacerbating a situation