Pistachios are Iran’s biggest non-oil export and the source of politician Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani’s family fortune, so these changes could have serious political repercussions.

The clip from Al-Jazeera English above gives a bit more background on Iran’s pistachio industry and its rivalry with the U.S. and a  snip from the FT article follows:

-WW

Pistachios are one of the Islamic republic’s leading commodities, constituting 11 per cent of non-oil exports – more than Iran’s famous hand-woven carpets, saffron and dates.

They generated $1.2bn in export earnings in 2007 and $800m in 2008, according to the Pistachio Association. It is predicting a figure of $1.2bn for 2009.

The relatively poor showing of the nuts is a symptom of the wider problems afflicting Iran’s agricultural sector, which accounts for about 17 per cent of gross domestic product. Farming suffers from a shortage of investment by the government and the private sector.

Limited funding by banks, under-mechanised systems and the high costs of water make Iranian produce uncompetitive.

Most of the pistachio industry is private and controlled by small-scale farmers. The government does not set prices but it sometimes steps in to buy crops to support farmers.

IREN, Iran’s Environmental News Agency, has coverage of a recent international conference on the increasing likelihood of wars over water resources.   Running under the headline “Fresh Warnings of Water Wars” the piece quotes a speech from Iranian environmental science professor Esmail Kahram who cited as a possible flashpoint Iran’s dispute with Afghanistan about water rights in the Helmand (aka Hirmand) River:

In our country, for example, Lake Hamoun once had 10 million cubic meters of capacity, but Afghanistan built the first and second Kajaki dams over the Helmand River [which flows from Afghanistan to Iran] and deprived us of this water.  This shows how the issue of rivers that flow across borders are one of the problems that could lead to wars over water.

The dispute over this waterway has been simmering for at least a hundred hears (for background check out this piece)   But the last few years of low rainfalls and increasing aridity of formerly fertile land seem to have again raised worries in Tehran over the geopolitics of water.   It will be interesting to see if the water issue comes up in the upcoming discussions on Afghanistan.  In any case, the Helmand dispute will be important to keep an eye on as a gauge of concerns over Iran’s water equation, and thus the cost-benefit of possible Iranian water deals with Arab states.

Mohammad Nurian, the president of Iran’s Meteorology Organization has warned, that low rainfall levels put sixteen of Iran’s provinces on the “threshold of total drought ” for the upcoming year, according to a recent article published by Iran’s Environmental News Agency.   Nurian warned that drastic human and economic costs would be suffered if the upcoming water shortage were not better planned-for.  Iran’s varied geography makes for drastic differences in climate from region to region.  In the past, severe water shortages in Iran’s  south have scuttled deals to sell excess potable water from water-rich provinces like Khuzistan  to Gulf Arab States.

The above image is taken from a very interesting report on Iranian wheat production put online by the US Foreign Agricultural Service.  The full text and more historical data on Iran’s rainfall is available here.

“A noxious tide of toilet paper, raw sewage and chemical waste has transformed Dubai’s most prestigious stretch of shoreline into a foul-smelling health hazard.

A stretch of the exclusive Jumeirah Beach — a magnet for Western tourists and home to a string of hotels — has been closed.”

This particular article is a bit over dramatized, but it is typical of the environmental horror stories that are common in press coverage of the UAE, both international and domestic. In this case, the culprit was workers dumping waste into storm drains that led directly to the beach. Tomorrow the story could be shipping waste, air pollution, helicopter noise, the list goes on. There is no doubt that pollution of the Gulf is a big problem on the way to becoming a huge one.

The UAE government is certainly aware of the problem, and seems keen clamp down on domestic polluters. It has also conducted bilateral deals with Bahrain, for example this agreement recently renewed on limiting fishing. But the problem is that the Gulf is a small ecological neighborhood, so bilateral deals can only go so far. Any serious efforts to combat problems like water pollution or overfishing will require coordination of all the Gulf states.

A few months back al-Jazeera reported that the GCC and Iran were studying a joint security apparatus. This went nowhere, largely I would guess because of the huge amounts of tension on the geopolitical level over things like the three islands dispute, the nuclear issue, perceived Iranian meddling in the Levant, etc.

Given this, I would think some type of joint Iran-GCC effort on environmental issues have a much better chance of getting somewhere than security talks. Could it actually work? I don’t know, but its certainly something to watch going forward.