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Iran’s policy priorities intensify water crisis

Nature Sustainability (2026)Cite this article

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The chronic water crisis in Iran stems from decades of water-intensive development, fragmented governance and national priorities that sidelined environmental protection. Without major governance reform and reprioritization, technical solutions alone cannot stop worsening water and environmental degradation.

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Fig. 1: Drying lakes, wetlands and reservoirs in Iran.
Fig. 2: A conceptual framework for Iran’s water crisis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Geo‐Hydroinformatics, Hamburg University of Technology, Hamburg, Germany

    Nima Shokri & Salome M. S. Shokri-Kuehni

  2. United Nations University Hub on Engineering to Face Climate Change at the Hamburg University of Technology, United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH), Hamburg, Germany

    Nima Shokri

  3. United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH), Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada

    Nima Shokri, Elmira Hassanzadeh, Kaveh Madani, Mojtaba Sadegh, Salome M. S. Shokri-Kuehni & Amir AghaKouchak

  4. Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Paolo D’Odorico

  5. Department of Civil, Geological, and Mining Engineering, Polytechnique Montréal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

    Elmira Hassanzadeh

  6. Department of Journalism, City St George’s, University of London, London, UK

    Sanam Mahoozi

  7. Department of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, USA

    Ali Mirchi

  8. Department of Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

    Ali Nazemi

  9. Department of Civil Engineering, Boise State University, Boise, ID, USA

    Mojtaba Sadegh

  10. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Center for Hydrometeorology and Remote Sensing, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA

    Amir AghaKouchak

  11. Department of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA

    Amir AghaKouchak

Authors
  1. Nima Shokri
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  2. Paolo D’Odorico
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  3. Elmira Hassanzadeh
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  4. Kaveh Madani
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  5. Sanam Mahoozi
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  6. Ali Mirchi
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  7. Ali Nazemi
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  8. Mojtaba Sadegh
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  9. Salome M. S. Shokri-Kuehni
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  10. Amir AghaKouchak
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nima Shokri.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Shokri, N., D’Odorico, P., Hassanzadeh, E. et al. Iran’s policy priorities intensify water crisis. Nat Sustain (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-026-01784-0

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