Dr. Kaveh Madani, a global water expert from Imperial College London, meets Gelareh Darabi and the Al Jazeera Earthrise team by the Zayandeh-Rud River in Isfahan (Esfahan) to explain the root causes of Iran's water crisis.
In his opinion, there are three main reasons for Iran's rapidly declining water resources, "one being the rapid population growth".
He says: "In less than two decades the population of Iran doubled. The second cause is an inefficient agricultural sector. It's been very important for us over the years of war with Iraq and after that during the sanctions. So it was natural to be really worried about food self-sufficiency and food availability in this country. And the third cause being mismanagement."
"Water is also linked to so many things and unless we understand and appreciate the linkages and this complexity, we cannot solve this crisis," he adds.
And a crisis is exactly what it is becoming, Madani explains: "Rivers and lakes are going dry one after another, we're losing wetlands, we're seeing land subsidence, we're seeing desertification, which is really sad."
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