TEHRAN — Iran is increasingly “becoming a desert” thanks to decades of wasted water supplies and a dry climate exacerbated by climate change, Tehran daily Arman-e Emruz reported Thursday.

Water resource specialist Mohammadreza Fatemi told the newspaper that the state environmental agency has mismanged water resources for at least 20 years, destroying the environment in the process. Only now, he said, are Iranians and the government seeing the “depth of the problem.”

The daily cited Iran as among the top six countries in the world in terms of forest destruction, the leading country for desertification due to human factors and the leading country in “the destruction of fauna,” though it didn’t reference a source.

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