Climate change, war and mismanagement are putting Iran’s water supply under major strain, experts have warned.
The Middle Eastern country has faced years of intense drought, which scientists have found was made more intense due to human-caused climate change.
In recent years, Iranian citizens have protested against the government’s management of water supplies, pointing the blame at decades of poor planning and shortsighted policies.
As water supplies run low, authorities warned last year that several of Iran’s major cities – including the capital, Tehran – could soon face “water day zero”, when a city’s water service is turned off and existing supplies rationed.
Meanwhile, recent air strikes on desalination plants in Iran and Bahrain are driving wider questions about how the war might exacerbate water insecurity across the Middle East.
One expert tells Carbon Brief the conflict is “straining an already-fragile [water] system” within Iran.
In this article, Carbon Brief looks at how conflict is combining with climate change and unsustainable use to place pressure on Iran’s water supplies.
- How close are Iran’s major cities to a ‘water day zero’?
- What role is climate change playing?
- What other factors are involved?
- How could attacks on desalination plants impact water supplies in the Middle East?
- What policies could help Iran avoid a ‘water day zero’?
How close are Iran’s major cities to a ‘water day zero’?
Iran is one of the most water-stressed countries in the world and is currently in the grips of an unprecedented, multi-year drought.
The country’s hot and dry climate means that freshwater is scarce. However, many Iranian citizens also blame decades of government mismanagement for the present-day water shortages.
In January, the Guardian explained that over multiple decades, Iranian officials abandoned the country’s “qanat aquifer system”, which consists of tens of thousands of tunnels dug into hillsides across the country that lead to underground water storage. This system has been “supplying [Iran’s] cities and agriculture with freshwater for millennia”, the newspaper said.
To replace the aquifer system, the government built dozens of dams over the second half of the 20th century, which together hold around a quarter of the country’s total water resource, according to the Guardian. However, it added:
“But by putting major dams on rivers too small to sustain them, the authorities brought short-term relief at the cost of longer-term water loss: evaporation from reservoirs increased while upland areas were deprived of water, now trapped behind the dams.”
Yale Environment 360 noted in December that “in the past half century, around half of Iran’s qanats have been rendered waterless through poor maintenance or as pumped wells have lowered water tables within hillsides”.
Agriculture is responsible for 90% of Iran’s water use. Over 2003-19, Iran lost around 211 cubic kilometres of groundwater – around twice the country’s annual water consumption – largely due to unregulated water pumping for farming.
The images below show how Lake Urmia in the north-west of the country – once the largest lake in the Middle East – has almost completely dried up since 2001 as water that feeds that lake has been diverted.
Towards the end of 2025, Iran’s Meteorological Organisation warned that the main dams supplying drinking water to major cities, such as Tehran, Tabriz and Mashhad, were close to “water day zero”.
The term “water day zero” has been used by academics, media and governments to describe the moment when a city or region’s municipal water supply becomes so depleted that authorities have to turn off taps and implement water rationing. It has been used to describe water crises in Cape Town, South Africa and Chennai, India.
In a televised national address in November, Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian reportedly said the government had “no other choice” but to relocate the capital due to “extreme pressure” on water, land and infrastructure systems.
(This came after the government announced in January it would relocate its capital to the southern coastal region of Makran, citing Tehran’s enduring overpopulation, power shortages and water scarcity.)
Tehran is home to 10 million people and consumes nearly a quarter of Iran’s water supplies.
The water shortages have fuelled nation-wide protests, which have been often-violently suppressed by the government.
Prof Kaveh Madani, former deputy vice-president of Iran and the director of the UN University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, tells Carbon Brief that recent rainfall means the threat of “water day zero” has subsided in Iran in recent months.
However, he stresses that a combination of climate change and “local human factors” mean “many, many places in Iran are in ‘water bankruptcy’ mode”.
“Water bankruptcy” is when water systems have been overused to the point they can no longer meet demand without causing irreversible damage to the environment, according to Madani’s own research.
What role is climate change playing?
Iran is currently facing its sixth year of consecutive drought conditions.
An update posted in November by the National Iranian American Council quoted Mohsen Ardakani – managing director of Tehran Water and Wastewater Company – as saying:
“We are entering our sixth consecutive drought year. Since the start of the 2025-26 water year (about a month ago), not a single drop of rain has fallen anywhere in the country.”
The country’s most recent “water year”, which ran from September 2024 to September 2025, was one of the driest on record. Over the 12-month period, the country recorded 81% less rainfall than the historical average.
Meanwhile, temperatures in Iran can soar above 50C in the hot season, pushing the limits of human survivability and exacerbating water loss through evaporations from reservoirs of water.
Multiple attribution studies have shown that climate change is making the country’s hot and dry conditions more intense and likely.
In 2023, the World Wealth Attribution service (WWA) carried out an analysis on the drought conditions in Iran over 2020-23.
This study investigated agricultural drought, which focuses on the difference between rainfall amounts and levels of evapotranspiration from soils and plants.
The study explored how often a drought of a similar intensity would have occurred in a world without warming and how often it could occur in the climate of 2023. The researchers found that the drought would have been a one-in-80 year event without global warming, but a one-in-five year event in 2023’s climate.
They added that if the planet continues to heat, reaching a warming level of 2C above pre-industrial temperatures, Iran could expect a drought of 2023’s severity, on average, every other year.
The graphic below illustrates these results, where a pink dot indicates the number of years in every 81 with an event like the 2020-23 drought over Iran.
The box on the left shows how often such a drought would be expected in a pre-industrial climate, in which there is no human-driven warming. The box in the centre shows 2023’s climate, which has warmed 1.2C as a result of human-caused climate change. The box on the right shows a world in which the climate is 2C warmer than in the pre-industrial period.
Two years later, WWA carried out another study on drought in Iran, this time focusing on the five-year drought over 2021-25. The authors found an “even stronger impact” of climate change than their previous analysis.
A range of other attribution studies for Iran over the past five years have concluded that climate change made heatwaves and droughts over the region more intense and likely.
Meanwhile, the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO’s) “state of the climate in the Arab region 2024” report warned about the impact of climate change on water security across the region.
In a statement, WMO secretary general Prof Celeste Saulo warned that “droughts are becoming more frequent and severe in one of the world’s most water-stressed regions”.
What other factors are involved?
Climate change is not the only – or even the primary – driver of water scarcity in Iran.
Madani explains:
“We have both the human factors and the climatic factors…A lot of times, local human factors are much more important and significant than the global factors.”
For example, Madani says, the country has experienced large population growth, but its population is concentrated in “a very few large metropolitan” areas, meaning it can struggle to provide enough water to those places. He also points to inefficient agricultural practices and overreliance on technological solutions, including dams and desalination plants.
The vast majority of the country’s water stress comes from its agricultural sector, which accounts for more than 90% of Iran’s water use.
Dr Assem Mayar, an independent researcher focused on water resources and climate security, tells Carbon Brief that Iran’s arid climate means that it uses more water per unit area for cultivating crops than other countries. This issue is compounded by government policies promoting domestic agriculture, he says:
“[Iran’s] government tries to be self-reliant in [the] food sector, which consumes the most share of water in the country.”
Both of the country’s main water sources – surface water and groundwater – are overexploited, Mayar says.
A 2021 study on the drivers of groundwater depletion in Iran found that between 2002 and 2015, Iran’s aquifers were depleted by around 74 cubic kilometres – 1.6 times larger than the amount of water stored in Iran’s largest lake, Lake Urmia, at its highest recorded levels.
The study also found that some basins had experienced depletion rates of up to 2,600% in that timeframe.
Groundwater aquifers naturally “recharge” as water percolates down from the surface. However, a 2023 study also found that this rate of recharge has been declining since the early 2000s.
When groundwater or other resources are extracted from the ground in high quantities, the land above the aquifer can compact and the aquifers themselves can collapse, leading to “subsidence” as the land surface sinks. Iran is one of the countries with the largest subsidence rates in the world, according to a 2024 study.
In late 2025, BBC News reported that Iran had begun “cloud seeding” – injecting salt particles into clouds to promote condensation, in an effort to “combat the country’s worst drought in decades”.
The country has been employing the technique since 2008 and reports that rainfall increased by 15% in the targeted areas as a result.
However, this does little to address the root of the problem, experts tell Carbon Brief.
Prof Nima Shokri, director of the Institute of Geo-Hydroinformatics at Hamburg University of Technology, tells Carbon Brief:
“Iran’s water crisis stems primarily from decades of policy choices that prioritised ideological and geopolitical objectives over sustainable resource management. A costly foreign policy posture and prolonged international isolation have limited access to foreign investment, modern technology and diversified economic development.
“Domestically, this has translated into policies that encouraged groundwater-dependent agriculture, expanded irrigated land without enforceable extraction limits, maintained heavy energy and water subsidies and underinvested in wastewater reuse, leakage reduction and monitoring systems.”
How could attacks on desalination plants impact water supplies in the Middle East?
A pair of attacks on desalination plants has led to significant media speculation around how the conflict might exacerbate freshwater supplies, both in Iran and across the Middle East.
On Saturday 7 March, Iran accused the US of attacking a desalination plant on Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz.
Describing the attack on the critical water infrastructure as “blatant and desperate crime”, foreign minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi said water supply in 30 villages had been impacted.
The next day, Bahrain government said Iran had caused “material damage” to one of its desalination plants during a drone attack.
David Michel, senior fellow for water security at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, told the Daily Mail that attacks on water plants in Gulf states by Iran could be designed to “impose costs” that push them to intervene or call for the end of the war.
There has been a boom in desalination across the Middle East in recent decades, as water-scarce countries have turned to the technology – which transforms seawater into freshwater – to boost freshwater supplies.
Collectively, the Middle East accounts for roughly 40% of global desalinated water production, producing 29m cubic metres of water every day, according to a 2026 review. This is shown in the chart below.
Iran has more than 163 desalination plants. However, it is less reliant on these plants than smaller countries in the region with fewer water reserves.
In a 2022 policy paper, the Institut Français des Relations Internationales noted Kuwait, Qatar and Oman sourced 90%, 90% and 86% of drinking water from desalination plants, respectively.
In contrast, an official from Iran’s state-run water company told the Tehran Times in 2022 that just 3% of the country’s drinking water came from desalination plants. (Iran’s water supply is sourced primarily from groundwater and rivers and reservoirs.)
Shrokri says the ongoing conflict is “hitting water security” in Iran through “direct and indirect” attacks on critical infrastructure – including desalination plants, power stations and water networks. He adds:
“The conflict is straining an already fragile system inside Iran. The country entered the war with severe drought, depleted groundwater and shrinking reservoirs, so any disruption to energy systems, industrial facilities or supply chains can quickly cascade into water shortages.”
Shokri also highlights that attacks on desalination plants in the Gulf could have serious consequences for major cities – including Dubai, Doha and Abu Dhabi – “rely heavily” on desalinated seawater for drinking water. He says:
“Without desalination plants, large parts of the region’s modern urban system will struggle to exist. The ripple effects would extend far beyond drinking water. Sanitation systems would begin to fail, public health risks would rise and economic activity could slow dramatically.”
Experts have pointed out that attacks on electricity infrastructure could also impact provision of drinking water, given desalination plants are energy-intensive and often co-located with power plants.
Dr Raha Hakimdavar, a hydrologist at Georgetown University, told Al Jazeera that attacks on desalination plants could also impact domestic food production in the long-term, if groundwater is diverted away from agriculture and towards households.
What policies could help Iran avoid a ‘water day zero’?
Experts tell Carbon Brief that the conflict could make chronic water shortages in Iran more likely – even if hostilities are unlikely to directly force a “water day zero”.
Shokri says:
“The war could accelerate the timeline, but it didn’t create the risk of day zero. Iran’s water system was already under extreme pressure from long-term mismanagement and distorted policy priorities. Conflict simply reduces the margin for error.”
Mayar says the war is “unlikely to force day zero nationwide”, but could bring forward “localised day‑zero conditions in already stressed regions”. These effects could be felt most acutely in Iran’s islands and cities that are already “facing chronic shortages”, he continues.
Since agriculture is such a large contributor to the country’s water usage, potential solutions must focus on that sector, experts say.
Mayar says the government should “phase out subsidy policies that encourage overuse”.
In 2018, researchers at Stanford University released a “national adaptation plan for water scarcity in Iran”, as part of a programme looking at the country’s long-term sustainable development.
That report lays out two sets of adaptation actions: those that work to improve the efficiency of water use and those that end water-intensive activities. Among the specific actions recommended by the report are reusing treated wastewater, reducing irrigated farming and enhancing crop-growing productivity through technological solutions.
The adaptation report concludes:
“The underlying solution to address Iran’s water problem is obvious: consumption should be regulated and reduced, water productivity should be improved and wastewater should be treated and reused in the system.”
Meanwhile, Shokri argues that the “main obstacle” to water reform in Iran is not technical capacity, but “government-set national priorities”. He explains:
“Significant public resources are directed toward non-civil spending and external commitments, leaving limited room for sustained investment in water management and environment…Real progress will require shifting attention and resources toward water security, environmental protection and long-term economic resilience.”
The post Q&A: How climate change and war threaten Iran’s water supplies appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Q&A: How climate change and war threaten Iran’s water supplies
New Zealand’s parliament has adopted a controversial new law blocking a whole avenue of climate litigation and shutting down its most advanced corporate lawsuit, which has been blamed by the government for shaking business confidence and investment.
The Climate Change Response (Tort Liability) Amendment Bill, expected to take effect in the coming days after it is formally signed by the Governor-General, prevents all current and future civil claims for climate loss or harm under tort law.
Justice minister Paul Goldsmith said last week that the aim was to give businesses “certainty around their climate change obligations”, noting it would not alter the government’s responsibilities under the Climate Change Response Act 2002 nor business obligations under the Emissions Trading Scheme.
“Our response to climate change is best managed by the Government at a national level and not through piece-meal litigation in the courts,” he added in a statement.
Such litigation, he said, “risks developing a new regime that contradicts the framework Parliament has already enacted” to tackle climate change.
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Experts say that despite dismissing the lawsuit, the ruling sets a precedent by confirming that climate science can establish legal liability for the damage caused by emissions
Goldsmith singled out a key domestic climate lawsuit brought by Northland iwi leader and activist Mike Smith against six big companies: dairy firms Fonterra and Dairy Holdings, energy firms Genesis Energy and Z Energy, New Zealand Steel and coal mining firm BT Mining. A seventh original defendant, Channel Infrastructure, was dropped after it permanently decommissioned its Marsden Point oil refinery.
Smith argued that these companies had caused him harm under public nuisance and negligence law, as well as a third breach of a duty to cease contributing to climate change that has yet to be tested domestically. He did not seek financial compensation, instead asking for the companies to immediately stop emitting or contributing to net greenhouse gas emissions.
In one of the most advanced corporate climate accountability lawsuits in the world, a trial had been scheduled for April 2027 after the Supreme Court unanimously allowed the case to continue.
Corporate lobbying in the shadows
Smith described the passing of the bill as “deeply concerning”, particularly as it coincided with the Supreme Court hearing another of his climate lawsuits. In that case, Smith v Attorney-General, he argues that the government’s response to climate change and its impacts on Māori communities in particular breaches rights to life and culture.
“That timing raises profound questions about the separation of powers and the rule of law,” said Smith. “Whatever one’s view of the merits of these cases, it is deeply troubling when parliament intervenes to remove a legal pathway while the courts are actively considering fundamental questions about climate responsibility, rights and the crown’s obligations.”
The bill – which says that no person (including the government) can be found liable in tort for emissions-related climate change effects – followed major lobbying efforts by the companies defending themselves in Smith’s lawsuit. They outlined a proposed legal amendment in a briefing note to the government in 2024.
The centre-right government has been fiercely criticised over its lack of transparency in relation to this lobbying activity. The national ombudsman recently found that the Prime Minister’s Office effectively withheld information requested by the Environmental Law Initiative about meetings, discussions and conversations regarding Smith’s case.
Green groups fail to stop bill
The bill sparked huge concern among environmental campaigners in New Zealand and elsewhere. Greenpeace Aotearoa called it a “shocking abuse of executive power” and the vast majority of submissions to a parliamentary inquiry said it should be rejected.
But in the end, it was adopted with little resistance, moving relatively smoothly through parliament, passing its third reading by 67 votes to 53. Sam Bookman, climate law lecturer at Melbourne Law School, told Climate Home News he was not surprised by this, given that the coalition government has a secure majority.
A complaint has been made to the UN special rapporteur on climate change and human rights by Smith, the National Iwi Chairs Forum Pou Tikanga and youth coalition Climate Clinic Aotearoa over what they see as the government’s heavy-handed approach. Smith is also challenging the new law in yet another lawsuit.
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Bookman thinks it “very unlikely” that such a challenge will succeed, noting that New Zealand’s constitution is firmly anchored in parliamentary sovereignty.
But the expert in climate law does not see the bill as the end of legal action in the country, noting that New Zealand has a “sophisticated climate litigation landscape with a growing number of specialist and experienced lawyers and NGOs”.
The country is also approaching its next general election in November, and some opposition parties have pledged to restore access to the courts if elected.
Amanda Larsson, global project lead on agriculture for Greenpeace International, said: “This law deserves to be tested, and I strongly encourage the international climate litigation community to unite and help defend New Zealanders’ fundamental right to hold polluters accountable before this becomes a global blueprint.”
Copycat legislation on the rise
New Zealand’s move is part of a small but growing legislative effort to shut down climate litigation around the world.
In the US, Republican politicians introduced legislation in the House and Senate in April that would shield fossil fuel firms from climate liability lawsuits. Similar laws have already been passed at state level in Tennessee, Utah, Iowa and Louisiana.
The German state of Bavaria has put forward a similar proposal to the Federal Council, aiming to block private climate claims as well as the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments imposing such liability. There are also proposals to limit available remedies and actions in the Netherlands and Belgium.
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Bookman said he expects more efforts to counter climate damages litigation and advised plaintiffs to think about how to respond, including drawing on broader support in opposing them.
“Even though it’s very hard for plaintiffs to win these types of cases, companies are very eager to avoid the expense, embarrassment and political accountability that come even with unsuccessful lawsuits,” he said.
The post New Zealand moves to protect business with law curtailing climate litigation appeared first on Climate Home News.
New Zealand moves to protect business with law curtailing climate litigation
Bhima Yudhistira Adhinegara is the Executive Director of the Center of Economic and Law Studies (CELIOS), an Indonesia-based economic think tank. Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat is the Director of the China-Indonesia desk at CELIOS.
Indonesia produces around 60% of the world’s nickel, a metal used to manufacture batteries for electric vehicles (EVs) – more than any other country in the world. But in 2026, the government sharply reduced how much of its nickel can be extracted from the ground.
Production quotas were reduced by around 40% this year compared to 2025. Weda Bay, the largest nickel mine on Earth, had its allowance cut by more than 70% and exhausted its full-year quota by the end of May, halting mining entirely; it cannot resume large-scale extraction until next year unless regulators grant an extension.
The policy has sparked a vivid debate in Indonesian policy circles: how can the country shift its strategy from a decade of mining vast quantities of cheap nickel to producing a high-value and low-carbon material that the rest of the world wants for EV batteries.
The cuts aren’t a silver bullet to clean up Indonesia’s nickel industry, whose smelters are powered by coal – the most polluting fossil fuels. But alongside stricter enforcement of environmental rules, it is one side of efforts to produce more sustainable nickel for a premium.
Restricting Indonesia’s nickel output
Production quotas were introduced to stop the collapse of nickel prices because of oversupply in the market. Prices had fallen more than 40% in 2023 alone and kept sliding as Indonesian supply kept growing, hitting a four-year low of around $13,900 a ton in late 2025.
Critics called the recent tightening of production quotas proof that Indonesia’s nickel strategy has failed, arguing that the industry shouldn’t need to throttle its own output to survive. But when assessed against what the policy was supposed to do – push up nickel prices – it has worked. Prices jumped to $20,000 a ton in May, the highest since 2024.
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Chinese industry groups representing companies that have invested billions to mine and refine the country’s nickel were furious, warning Indonesia’s president Prabowo Subianto that the cuts put $50 billion worth of investment at risk. But much of that Chinese capital is sunk into smelters and processing plants built specifically to run on Indonesian ore, and cannot simply be moved elsewhere. That gives Jakarta more room to hold its ground than the warning suggests.
Stronger environmental enforcement
Since the start of the year, Indonesia’s forestry task force has seized more than four million hectares of land from mines and plantations operating illegally in protected forests, collecting over two trillion rupiah ($113 million) in fines.
This included 148 hectares seized from Weda Bay for lacking a forestry permit. The share of nickel produced from illegal small-scale mining also fell from about a quarter in 2022 to roughly 10% by 2024.
The crackdown responds to serious environmental damages in the nickel industry. On Obi Island, a waste pond collapsed after heavy rain in June 2025, flooding three villages and killing a resident. Internal company tests found chromium-6 – a carcinogen – in the water, in quantities far above the legal limit. The footprint of another mine near Raja Ampat, which is home to some of the world’s richest coral reefs, grew 60-fold in just eight years.
The market is responding to early cleanup efforts. Low-carbon nickel now sells for a real premium, roughly $18,800 to $19,300 a ton compared with $17,900 to $18,300 otherwise, as carmakers seek to source cleaner materials to comply with the European Union’s new emissions rules for imports.
In turn, this is incentivising the industry to do more to green its operations. Vale Indonesia’s smelter in South Sulawesi now runs almost entirely on hydropower, for example.
None of this addresses coal use, however. Major Indonesian nickel producers still emitted an estimated 15 million metric tons of greenhouse gases in 2023. Indonesia may be cracking down on illegal mining and rewarding cleaner producers but it is still running its mines on the dirtiest fuel available.
Unequal benefits
For Indonesia to truly benefit from producing cleaner and high-value nickel, it needs to reap the economic benefits too. Although the industry has boosted the country’s economic growth, the reality on the ground tells a different story.
Konawe in Southeast Sulawesi is home to a major smelting complex. Growth in the district jumped from 6% to 22% between 2015 and 2023, driven almost entirely by the nickel industry, according to a study by the Lowy Institute study. At the same time, poverty levels increased slightly and unemployment remained unchanged.
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In Halmahera, another epicentre of the nickel industry, spending by the poorest fifth grew just 5% between 2019 and 2022, compared with 28% for the wealthiest fifth, according to a separate study.
Part of the reason for this inequality is the system for transferring mining royalties to district authorities where the mines are located. In theory, they are entitled to the largest share. But in practice, payments are delayed, companies routinely dispute what they owe and royalties are pooled and distributed across a larger area.
The Natural Resource Governance Institute has found that decentralisation handed local governments power to approve new mines faster than they could build their capacity to manage them. Higher output raises national income on paper, but local governments remain constrained by fiscal rules and infrastructure costs that scale with mining.
None of this makes the 2026 quota cuts a mistake. Indonesia has every right to defend its pricing power over a resource it controls. But limiting extraction isn’t going to fix underlying issues around environmental enforcement and revenue-sharing. That requires rules that are consistently enforced, royalties that reach communities living by the mines, and a plan to wean smelters off coal.
The post Indonesia’s nickel production cuts are not enough to create a sustainable industry appeared first on Climate Home News.
Indonesia’s nickel production cuts are not enough to create a sustainable industry
Climate Change
Risk of “catastrophic” oil spill reaching Kimberley coast found in Woodside’s Scott Reef gas drilling plans
SYDNEY, Monday 24 August 2026 – New analysis of Woodside modelling released by Greenpeace Australia Pacific and Environs Kimberley has revealed the oil and gas corporation’s plans to drill at Scott Reef could cause an oil spill up to 30 times bigger than the 2009 Montara disaster, impacting the Kimberley coastline and reaching as far as Indonesia.
The new analysis details the “catastrophic” oil spill risk put to environmental regulators for approval by Woodside in its Browse to North West Shelf Project (Browse) plans, the worst-case scenario being a blowout directly below Scott Reef, polluting whale migratory pathways and covering isolated turtle nesting ground with oil condensate.
An FOI application (F348) revealed the federal environment department (DCCEEW) asked offshore oil and gas regulator NOPSEMA to look into the oil spill risk in 2025. NOPSEMA’s response to the application refused access to its report, and one document shows DCCEEW sought further advice this year.
Greenpeace and Environs Kimberley are calling on the Federal Government to publicly release the NOPSEMA report given the risk of an uncontrolled release of oil condensate from directly below Scott Reef.
Hannah Schuch, Senior Campaigner at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “Woodside is aware that drilling at Scott Reef risks a massive oil spill that would have severe, far-reaching consequences. It appears environmental regulators are aware too.
“The state and federal governments need to take this risk from Woodside’s drilling plans seriously, as they could end up allowing the worst oil spill in Australian history.
“The pygmy blue whales that migrate up and down the WA coast with their newborns each year could be swimming and feeding in toxic, oil-slicked water. Woodside’s proposal to drill at Scott Reef is an environmental disaster waiting to happen, and the WA and federal governments have one surefire way to prevent catastrophe — reject Browse.”
Martin Prichard, Executive Director at Environs Kimberley, said: “A catastrophic oil spill by Woodside would be disastrous not just for marine life in the area but also for the Kimberley’s $500 million tourism industry.
“The state and federal governments will see five marine parks on the Kimberley coast included in the risk area of a catastrophic Woodside oil spill.
“The Montara oil spill was disastrous for West Timor with the toxic oil destroying seaweed farmers’ livelihoods. The Kimberley dodged a bullet with Montara, we were lucky the spill didn’t head our way. Myself and a crew flew over the Montara oil spill and followed it as far as we could. It was like a scene from a disaster movie.”
After the WA Environmental Protection Authority deemed Browse “unacceptable” due, in part, to oil spill risk, Woodside submitted a mitigation plan based on technology that has never been used “in anger”, a weakness stated in an independent expert review of the plan.
Professor Richard Steiner, independent oil spill expert, said: “A large offshore spill is impossible to effectively contain or recover. Historically, only 2-6% of total spill volume is recovered and the ecological injury from the release of toxic hydrocarbons in the sea can be severe, extensive, and long-term.
“Here in Alaska, government research concludes that several marine populations injured by the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, including whales, fish, and seabirds, are still not recovering today, 37 years later. We should expect similar long-term ecological impacts in Western Australia if there were to be a major oil spill. The only sure way to avoid the risk of a catastrophic marine oil spill is to not develop oil and gas projects in marine environments.”
-ENDS-
Media contact
Emma Sangalli on emma.sangalli@greenpeace.org or 0431 513 465
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