Thank you very much.
Mr. Chairman and honourable members of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development and the Subcommittee on International Human Rights, it is an honour and privilege for me as an Iranian Canadian to address this body on the matter of environmental accountability in Iran with a focus on water and, as a matter of fact, the lack thereof.
Based on the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the human right to water entitles everyone to sufficient, safe, acceptable, physically accessible and affordable water for personal and domestic use.
The Islamic Republic has a long list of harmful activities that have led to the destruction of Iran's water resources, which has also resulted in misery, retrogression, and environmental rollback of the country. Unsustainable projects, such as the construction of more than 650 dams without proper environmental studies, and giving permits for digging 400,000 wells, in addition to shutting an eye on another 430,000 illegal wells, have had major negative effects on surface and groundwater resources all around the country. As a result, millions of struggling farmers have abandoned their farmland and evacuated their villages. This is similar to what occurred in Syria before the civil war.
More than 33,000 villages have been partially or fully evacuated, mostly because of the destruction of water resources needed for farming. In 2013 government officials confirmed that 85% of Iran's groundwater resources were gone. In that year, 12 million Iranians lived in city margins and slums, and in 2018 the number reached 19 million.
On the other hand, the absence of sufficient watershed management plans and projects has proven to have catastrophic effects, especially during the recent devastating floods. Iran is losing more than two billion tons of topsoil, with a value exceeding $70 billion Canadian. Soil erosion is a direct result of the degradation of grasslands and forests, especially during flood seasons.
I should also add the impact of desertification and the evacuation of farmlands. Throughout the recent floods in the western and southwestern provinces of Lorestan, Ilam, Khuzestan, and of Fars and the northern province of Golestan, dozens of innocent Iranians were killed because of murky floods, but mostly because of bad management. More than 10 million Iranians have felt the trauma that could have been managed and substantially contained.
As a water conservationist and journalist who warned former president Mohammad Khatami in 2001 about the policies of his government of building so many dams and transferring water from one basin to another basin, briefing him on the impacts of those projects, I'm sorry to say that after 18 years, what I predicted is happening right now. Iran is a water bankrupt nation. While ignoring the importance of watershed management and maintaining aquifers, they have destroyed everything.
The continuation of those policies, led by a number of former student leaders who occupied the U.S. embassy in 1979 with the help of the revolutionary guards, is destroying the nation. Those student leaders and the revolutionary guards are responsible for so many dams that have blocked rivers and have killed aquifers.
Different government administrations have co-operated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC, to build major dams and interbasin water transport projects without considering the environmental and social impacts of building these megastructures. As a result of the reckless construction of such dams as Karun 3 on the Karun River, tens of villages have drowned and been evacuated, thousands of hectares of farmland have been destroyed, thousands of years of history and cultural inheritance have disappeared, and tens of thousands of inhabitants have had to migrate to slums and margins of such towns as Izeh.
Until the recent torrential rainfalls, Lake Urmia had lost about 90% of its volume because of the construction of more than 70 dams and depletion of the basin's groundwater and the unsustainable development of farmland in the region. Transfer of water rights of marshes and of farmland to other regions has distressed the people of Isfahan province, where farmers were constantly protesting for over a year. Depletion of groundwater resources has resulted in land subsidence and desertification.
In late 2017 and early 2018, many of the victims of the regime's strategies, including its water policies, had lost their jobs and farms. They joined the nationwide unrest. Since December 2017, protestors who have lost their lives have been from regions and towns such as Dorud, Tuyserkan, Ghahdrijan, Kazerun and Izeh, which have suffered from water scarcity. Loss of annual water supply per person to under 1,000 cubic metres could be translated as a water crisis. Many Iranians are facing that scarcity.
Based on an analysis conducted by the Center for Naval Analyses, with the escalation of water stress, the possibility of civil unrest, instability and violence will significantly rise. Water scarcity and the escalation of violence will not be and cannot be a good sign for promoters of human rights and democratic values, where survival will become the priority in many parts of Iran and millions will have no choice but to flee the country.
Is the world ready for another exodus? In recent years some have had to pay a high price for raising awareness and trying to save the environment. The highest price was paid by Iranian Canadian environmentalist and social scientist Dr. Kavous Seyed-Emami, who was arrested by the security forces of the revolutionary guards and lost his life in solitary confinement under suspicious conditions. Nowadays, a number of his colleagues, including Niloufar Bayani, a graduate of the University of McGill, are under the threat of being sentenced to death for crimes they never committed.
Lack of accountability is the main result of a non-democratic system that has given leeway and impunity to members of the government from different political stripes, as well as the revolutionary guards. Cronyism and corruption go hand in hand, especially in the absence of a free and independent media. I should note that it has been brought to my attention that a number of members of firms and organizations that have partnered with the revolutionary guards and the Islamic regime in destroying Iran's water resources are comfortably residing in Canada, enjoying the wealth of living in a water-rich country, while millions of Iranians are suffering from the consequences of their actions.
I hope this committee as well as other responsible bodies would be willing to actively seek information from former partners of the Islamic regime who have migrated to Canada. Many of these wealthy individuals have happily wired millions to Canada but have closed their eyes to crimes against humanity and their environment. I hope they will come to their senses.
Thank you very much.