#lake urmia
Lake Urmia, Iran,
The ferries that once shuttled tourists to and from the little islets in Iran’s Lake Urmia sit rusty, unable to move, on what is rapidly becoming a salt plain.
Just two decades ago, Urmia was the Middle East’s biggest lake, its local economy a thriving tourist center of hotels and restaurants.
Lake Urmia’s demise has been fast. It has more than halved in size – from 5,400 square kilometers (2,085 square miles) in the 1990s to just 2,500 square kilometers (965 square miles) today – according to the Department of Environmental Protection of West Azerbaijan, one of the Iranian provinces where the lake is located.
There are now concerns it will disappear entirely. Such problems are familiar in many parts of the Middle East – where water is simply running out.
The region has witnessed persistent drought and temperatures so high that they are barely fit for human life. Add climate change to water mismanagement and overuse, and projections for the future of water here are grim. Some Middle Eastern countries, including Iran, Iraq and Jordan, are pumping huge amounts of water from the ground for irrigation as they seek to improve their food self-sufficiency.
By Frederik Pleitgen, Claudia Otto, Angela Dewan and Mohammed Tawfeeq, CNN
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