Improved water supply and sanitation and water resources management boost economic growth and contribute effectively to poverty reduction.

The human right to water is indispensable for leading a life in human dignity. It is a prerequisite for the realization of other human rights: United Nation’s Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
The looming water crisis is one of the most critical challenges facing the world today. Global demand for this precious resource has increased more than sixfold over the past century compared with a threefold increase in world population. Although water has been explicitly recognized as a fundamental human right, 1.1 billion people lack access to improved water supply. Those who lack adequate and affordable water supplies are the poorest in society.
The debate about a solution has mostly been focused on the question of privatization of publicly owned water systems and water prices.
Among main questions and issues that governments are facing today include good water governance, water financing and integrated water management to progressively ensure that everyone has access to safe and secure drinking water, equitably without discrimination.
Water, as a life-saving substance, has a vital role in growth and prosperity of any society. As such, access to potable water is increasingly emerging as one of the most crucial parameters for assessing a government’s success in promoting economic welfare, and justice for that matter.
Investment in the water sector has paid off in economic growth of many countries.
In other words, the economic benefits of improved water supply and - in particular - sanitation far outweighs the investment costs.
Improved water supply and sanitation and water resources management boost countries’ economic growth and contribute greatly to poverty reduction.
In countries where water storage capacity is improved, national economies are more resilient to variability in rainfall and economic growth is boosted.
Investing in water is good business - improved water resources management and water supply and sanitation contribute significantly to increased productivity within economic sectors.

Major Task
Geographically labeled as one of the most arid lands on the planet Earth, many regions of Iran are faced with recurrent droughts, turning water supply management a major task for the government.
Given the recognition that Iran is one of the driest and most water scarce countries in the world, it ha been warned that this could increasingly affect the economic and social development of the country. To meet an increasing demand, groundwater is being extracted well beyond the renewal rate of the resource in the country. Absence of treatment of wastewater (from both urban and agricultural sectors) further puts pressure on freshwater resources.
In a recent interview with weekly Barnameh, affiliated to the Management and Planning Organization (MPO), deputy head of Iran Water Resources Management Company for planning and economic affairs, Alireza Daemi, discussed the government’s priorities in the water sector.
According to Daemi, government long-term policies in the water sector are revealed in the 20-Year Perspective Plan, while mid-term objectives are stipulated in the Fourth Five-Year Economic Development Plan (2005-10) and short-term plan in annual budget laws.
He said all three documents focus on efficient management of water resources with a view on its economic value. “Promoting optimal consumption patterns in various sectors is also a priority and the real challenge for the government. The industrial, agriculture and household sectors continue to consume water excessively. The government will be trying to improve water consumption models in each sector according to their needs, taking into account the geographical features of every region.“
Preservation of underground water resources, termed by experts as a country’s strategic water reserves, is a priority to avert environmental devastation caused by contamination through industrial wastes, Daemi noted. He added that another area of focus will be on maintaining sustainable development of water resources as well as running an efficient water distribution system to ensure that the precious commodity reaches all regions according to their needs.
“Iran possesses 130 billion cubic meters of renewable potable water, of which nearly 95 billion cubic meters are exploited with almost 86 billion cubic meters flowing into farms, seven billion cubic meters pumped into taps and two billion cubic meters used by the industrial plants.“
Distribution and supply of potable water system (for the household sector), said the official, requires the bigger share of the sector’s funds because it involves strict hygienic procedures.

Wastage
Daemi further said that a major challenge for the government is to put in place optimum water consumption patterns in the household sector. “Potable water wastage in Iran is higher than the global rate, while the industrial sector is failing to properly manage its waste often allowing it to trickle down to rivers, causing irreparable damage to the environment.“
He said improving consumption efficiency will endorse government plans to generate electricity from water.
As to putting a single body in charge of water consumption and production affairs, he said experience of other countries points to the failure of this strategy. Experts also advise against putting a single body in charge of managing a country’s financial resources.
“In the case of Iran as you know, the MPO has the authority to enforce financial management and supervisory policies, while executive organizations are the consumers. For example, water consumption management in the industrial sector should be with the Ministry of Industries and Mines, while the Energy Ministry in charge of the supply system.“
He believed bringing both the supplier and the consumer under a single body will aggravate wastage.
The government says it is trying to set a value for water. When asked if the public will be charged for the value of water through their utility bill, Daemi said determining the economic value of water is a different concept from the public charge rate.
“The government, for now, does not intend to charge the consumer for the water cost price, especially in view of the fact that water scarcity is more seen in underprivileged regions, implying that a higher charge on the water invoice would go against declared policies of the incumbent government which is to extend support to vulnerable families,“ he said. He pointed out the aim rather was to recognize water as a valuable economic commodity, determine the cost involved in producing and distributing it, ultimately helping the government to enforce more effective policies especially when it comes to fund disbursements.
It is no secret that water consumption level in Iranian metropolitan areas is higher than the average rate recorded for most developed cities in other parts of the world. For example, the per capita water consumption in European cities is 140 liters per day, while the related figure in Iran nears 300 liters.
“By raising public awareness on the cost of producing water, the government hopes to encourage people to rethink their consumption patterns. This is more like a cultural gesture. The UN Third-Millennium Development Goal for the water sector indicates that setting the value is one of the strategies for correcting water consumption models.“
Another result sought, he said, is to cause more transparency in related funds.
Daemi warned the increasing trend of population growth in the region has deteriorated the situation of water supply, which necessitates serious development plans in this sector in Iran.

Many nations are now trying to invest as much as possible in their national communication infrastructures in order to increase the security of communication and the speed of connection.

The “National Internet“ is a term widely being used by officials at the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology (ICT).
Abdolmajid Riyazi, deputy head of ICT Ministry and secretary of the High Council for IT, recently brought up the subject of national Internet, proposing the government set up a new network with a budget of one billion dollars. He said most of the information accessed by Internet users in Iran travels across the globe, even across the United States, before it is downloaded on their desktops. Therefore, he argues, setting up a network under the name of national Internet could help prevent the flow of sensitive and top secret information from Iran to other countries and save millions of dollars in costs.
Although these are some of the reasons that try to justify such as proposal, however, the main concern for many Iranian officials in the current circumstances is accessing the country’s Internet by other hostile nations Ð including the United States. This is because most of the sensitive executive matters of the country are conducted through the web, and hostile nations could try to disrupt the country’s access to the Internet.
The Internet, which is being used by billions of people worldwide these days, was the result of a research project by the US military personnel in the early 1960s that saw great potential value in allowing computers to share information on research and development in scientific and military fields.
The Internet, then known as ARPANET, was brought online in 1969 under a contract let by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), which initially connected four major computers at universities in the US. The early Internet was used by computer experts, engineers, scientists, and librarians. There was nothing friendly about it. There were no home or office personal computers those days, and anyone who used it, whether a computer professional or an engineer or scientist or librarian, had to learn to use a very complex system.
The Internet matured in the 70’s as a result of the TCP/IP architecture. It was adopted by the US Defense Department in 1980 and universally adopted by 1983. In the early 90’s, when independent commercial networks began to grow, it became possible to route traffic from one commercial site to another without passing through the US government funded NSFNet Internet backbone. Microsoft’s full scale entry into the browser, server, and Internet Service Provider market completed the major shift over to a commercially based Internet we have today.
During this period of enormous growth, some 80 percent of the website contents in the world were saved by special servers in the United States. As a result, giant corporations such as Microsoft have now turned the US into the digital capital of the world. Nowadays, Internet is a network without borders that could be accessed by anyone anywhere in the world in a matter of seconds. The Internet use has become so vital these days that many nations are now trying to invest as much as possible in their national communication infrastructures in order to increase the security of communication and the speed of connection.
The Internet is yet to be nationalized in the United States, which invented it in the first place. Thus proposals such as nationalization of Internet are indeed unrealistic and unacceptable. Even terms such as national network instead of national Internet is not applicable either, and for the same reason, an investment worth one billion dollars to this end as proposed by the ICT Ministry official will be money down the drain. Iran is lagging behind many other developing nations in terms of network infrastructures and spending huge amounts on the so-called National Internet would only mean wastage of financial resources.
The ICT Ministry officials have in fact chosen the wrong path to develop the national information technology. The best practice would be to spend the amount on improving the national security and the performance of domestic networks, and also increase the speed of Internet connections.