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All tagged environment
Japan will fund UN initiatives to support fisheries in Chabahar, on Iran’s southeastern coast, and help foster sustainable livelihoods for locals who live near Lake Urmia in the country’s northwest.
◢ Schools in Tehran were ordered to be closed on Wednesday after the Iranian capital was cloaked in dangerously high levels of air pollution, authorities said. Average concentrations of hazardous airborne particles hit 133 micrograms per cubic meter in the city and were as high as 150 for 10 districts.
◢ It is one of the worst ecological disasters of recent decades, but the shrinking of Iran's great Lake Urmia finally appears to be stabilizing and officials see the start of a revival. A rusty cargo ship and a row of colorful pedal boats lying untouched on the bone-dry basin are a sign of the devastating loss of water in what was once the largest lake in the Middle East.
◢ Iran faces losing 70 percent of its farmlands if urgent action is not taken to overcome a litany of climate woes, the country's environment chief Isa Kalantari told AFP. The Islamic Republic is grappling not only with air, water and soil pollution, as well as drought and desertification, but also with the effect of years of crippling US and international sanctions.
◢ Iran's vice-president in charge of environmental affairs has called for an explanation on the fate of more than a dozen activists arrested this year, state news agency IRNA reported Sunday. “We are not asking for their release or for their execution, we just want their fate to be clarified. This is part of their citizenship rights," Isa Kalantari, who heads Iran's environment department, told IRNA.
◢ Iran's efforts to counter worsening dust storms have been hampered by conflict in the region, the deputy head of the environment department said on Saturday. "We signed agreements with the Iraqi and Syrian governments in 2010 and 2011 to help them counter the source of dust storms," Masoud Tajrishi told a news conference in Tehran.
◢ Iran's environment chief said Tuesday that a government committee had concluded there was no evidence against wildlife activists rounded up on spying charges in recent months. Isa Kalantari, head of the government's department of environment, told state news agency IRNA that the conclusion had been reached by a special four-man committee.
◢ An Iranian lawmaker on Tuesday criticized a recent crackdown on environmental activists and officials, saying it risked "bad consequences for the country." Parliament's environmental and transparency committees held a closed-door session in which they discussed the arrest on espionage charges of several NGO workers earlier this year.
◢ A top Iranian environment official, who symbolized government efforts to encourage expat Iranians to return home, has quit just seven months into his job, sources said Monday. The resignation of Kaveh Madani, who was a young professor at London's Imperial College before returning to Iran in September 2017, followed reports of mounting conservative pressure against him.
