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The Karkheh River Basin is, most notably, the eastern flank of the "cradle of civilization" (ancient Mesopotamia) and a boundary between the Arab and Persian cultures. This major river system of western Iran has unique agricultural and hydrological aspects; but also much in common with other catchments around the world: debilitating rural poverty and land degradation, low water and agricultural productivity, a dry climate, and growing upstream-downstream competition for water. 

Changes in land use patterns in recent decades, especially overgrazing and conversion of natural pastures to rainfed cropping, have taken a heavy toll. Ninety percent of the upper watershed’s rangelands and 70 percent of its forests have been significantly degraded. At the same time, excessive use of fertilizers and pesticides is polluting groundwater, putting human health at serious risk. Surface waters, too, reflect the excesses of inappropriate farming practices.

The future of the Karkheh river basin and its people’s livelihoods clearly depends on more holistic, basin-wide management and monitoring of natural resources—water, soil, vegetation and livestock.

The Karkheh Basin Focal Project produced valuable insights about the specific nature of the food and water crisis at the basin scale.

1. Development of the Karkheh’s water resources has contributed in important ways to Iran’s food security and underpinned the livelihoods of both basin farmers and urban consumers.
2. Linkages between poverty and agricultural water use in the basin are weak.
3. There is now little if any additional water to develop. As a result, future water policy will need to increasingly focus on management and allocation of existing resources rather than development of new sources of supply.
4. Management focus should aim primarily at increasing water productivity to meet existing national priorities. In the short to medium term, this means focusing on improvements in physical water productivity, primarily the quantity of wheat output per unit of water input so as to improve the use scarce water resources for national food security priorities.
5. Poverty is still an issue in the Karkheh and targetted water interventions may assist in provery reduction

Click here and download published and unpublished documents on water poverty, water productivity and water use in the Karkheh Basin

The Integreated Database Information System [IDIS] Basin Kits provide baseline data layers (vector and grid) for the Karkheh Basin covering various domains such as climate, agriculture, soil, land use, topography, etc.

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