The Battle To Save Iran's Lake Orumieh

The world's third-largest salt lake is drying up and all the government has done is repress peaceful environmental protests

By Potkin Azarmehr

 An abandoned ship is stuck in the solidified salts of the Lake Orumieh, Iran. Photograph: Vahid Salemi/AP

Some of my fondest childhood memories are of Lake Orumieh and if I am ever able to go back to Iran visiting the lake will be one of my first stops. Now, I am horrified to think that not only may I never see the lake again, but my children and the future generations of Iranians will only read about what was once a magnificent part of their country. Lake Orumieh is drying up.

Located in north-west Iran, Orumieh is the largest lake in the Middle East and the third-largest salt lake on earth. It has more than 100 rocky islands, which add to its beauty and mystical allurement. Apart from its breathtaking natural scenery, it is also home to a kaleidoscope of wildlife, which includes more than 200 species of birds, various reptiles and amphibians and 27 mammals, including the Iranian yellow deer.

Lake Orumieh is not short of minerals either and, like the Dead Sea, its soil, minerals and salts are used to cure various ailments such as rheumatism, and dermatological and stress-related problems.

The lake is a national asset, one of the environmental wonders of the world and, in a normal country, it would have been one of the major attractions for international tourism.

However, the lake has shrunk by 60% and could disappear entirely within three to five years. The death of the lake will not just be a catastrophe for its wildlife but will also permanently change the climate of the region, causing the dispersal of some 14 million people.

Campaigners say the drying-up is a direct result of government policies and mismanagement, and they demand urgent action. Several man-made factors are contributing to the lake's demise. A highway bridge completed in 2008 has become a barrier to circulation, numerous dams have been built on rivers that supply the lake, and misguided irrigation policies have allowed farmers to extract underground water that also supplies the lake.

The Iranian government does not take kindly to peaceful protests, though. As with other important national issues, it frowns upon open debates and gatherings of people. Whether a gathering is large or small – even if it is completely peaceful and non-political – it is perceived by the Iranian regime as a threat to national security if it is not organised and controlled by the state itself. The same state that backed the recent riots in Britain as legitimate protests by the UK's poor and downtrodden cannot tolerate a peaceful environmental protest on its own territory.

The Iranian regime feels even more threatened by protests in provinces populated by Iran's ethnic minorities. It accuses separatists of being behind any protest and dissent, but the unreasonable force used by the regime in putting down legitimate protests only helps fuel such tendencies. The ethnic Azeris are not a small minority in Iran and it would be wrong to say they are discriminated against (the supreme leader himself is an Azeri by descent) but government policies in the last three decades have led to a feeling of "them against us".

Recent protests in the cities of Tabriz and Oroumiyeh were sparked when the parliament rejected an emergency bill to transfer water into the lake. The remarks made by the MP for Bojnord, north-east Iran – who said to "give money to those farmers who will lose their livelihood as a result of the lake drying up to go and retrain themselves with other skills" – were seen as particularly inflammatory by the Azeri population.

What started with chants of "our lake is on its last breaths and the parliament orders its final death" during a football match transformed into street protests in both major cities in the provinces of East Azerbaijan and West Azerbaijan. There were no calls for the downfall of the regime, the chants were all about saving the lake and the protesters were peaceful, but the regime's response – harsh crackdown, using tear gas and rubber bullets – sums up its very repressive nature.

Outside Iran, so far, only the Green party of Germany has issued a statement condemning the misguided policies and mismanagement by the Iranian government regarding the lake as well as condemning the crackdown on peaceful environmental protesters. UK environmental groups have been astonishingly silent. Orumieh lake and the protesters in Iran desperately need help by the international public opinion. Let's hope this help will not be denied.

-This commentary was published in The Guardian on 08/09/2011
- Potkin Azarmehr is an Iranian blogger living in London