Iranian President Hassan Rouhani ordered the rollout of the project on Thursday using a video conference call from his office in Tehran.

The lands located near the border with Pakistan in southeastern Iran are spread across 729 villages mostly in Zabol County in the province of Sistan and Baluchestan.

Agriculture minister Kazem Khavazi said that irrigation project would boost food security in Iran’s largest but poorest province.

Rouhani ordered the launch of over 4,600 agricultural projects on Thursday as part of his weekly inauguration campaigns.

His website said the projects had cost over 81 trillion rials (over $338 million) in spending, adding that they would create a total of 42,300 new jobs across the country.

The projects included nearly 4,000 drip irrigation systems, some 571 livestock and poultry units as well as a total of 150 fishery and aquaculture projects.

Khavazi said drip irrigation systems is now installed at nearly 2.5 million hectares of farming lands across Iran, almost double the area reported in 2013.

He said Iran had also reached a point of full self-sufficiency in manufacturing parts and components of irrigation systems inside the country.

On fisheries and aquaculture, the minister said output in the sector had seen a four-fold increase in eight years to 49,000 metric tons a year, adding that Iran is currently earning nearly $0.5 billion a year from fisheries exports.

Khavazi said Iran is now a net exporter of butter, a product for which the country used to spend big for 50,000 tons of imports each year.

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Heavy rainfalls in the country’s south, which started on Thursday, have caused flash floods in Sistan and Baluchestan Province and caused damage to more than 20,000 residential buildings, Abbas-Ali Arjmandi, director-general of the provincial Crisis Management Center said on Sunday.

The flash floods have also blocked rural roads leading to more than 500 villages and closed schools, Arjmandi said, adding that six villages have been evacuated so far.

He said heavy rains in southern areas of the province triggered the sudden flooding, which have also caused blackouts in several villages in the southeastern province.

Floods in Kerman Province have also blocked roads between 363 villages in the province, Majid Saeidi, head of the provincial crisis management center said on Sunday. He added that nearly 100 villages have lost electricity following the flooding.

In the southern province of Hormozgan, four villages were evacuated in the city of Jask on Saturday to prevent possible casualties.

On March 19, heavy downpours began sweeping the country, with raging currents battering houses, washing away cars and killing people in a few provinces.

The rainfalls eventually caused rivers to burst their banks triggering the worst flooding in decades in 25 of the country’s 31 provinces.

According to estimates, the flooding caused an estimated $2.9 billion in damage to roads, bridges, homes and farmland. It affected 4,400 villages, damaged 14,000 kilometers of roads and destroyed more than 700 bridges.

Estimates by government agencies suggest that the floods have taken the lives of nearly 80 people and destroyed over 25,000 houses around the country.

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“Precipitation in Iran is one-third of the world’s average, as the country is located in a dry and fragile region where we experience 11 millimeters decrease in precipitation every 10 years and an increase in evaporation of more than 50 millimeters every year,” he explained, ISNA reported.

In These dry areas across Iran, rainfall fluctuations usually lead to flood and devastation, so comprehensive planning for watershed management and flooding control is required, he noted.

Since most of the water supply is extracted from groundwater resources, the country is in a critical condition in terms of groundwater resources, he stated, highlighting, because perception is less than water withdrawal from the aquifers, so the best way to store rainwater is watershed and aquifer projects.

The main factor in disaster management

Having tackled over 34 out of 41 natural disasters identified worldwide, Iran is among the top countries most prone to natural disasters, according to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Disaster management is a cycle consisting of mitigation, preparedness, response and ended with recovery, the most neglected among which is preparedness in the country.

However, the response cycle is the most experienced part, with preparedness effectiveness and efficiency of response will increase.

Generally, crisis planning needs sufficient information from databases, but Iran suffers from a lack of access to great databases like spatial database information and Geographic Database Information and communication among organizations to interchange information.

Another problem is the lack of an organization to compensate for the destruction, as insurance plays the main role in risk transfer and funds for rebuilding.

Finally, the preparedness of people for emergency situations is a vital factor which needs appropriate public education in self-protecting behaviors, relief aids, mitigation, etc. and Iran has not done much to improve effectiveness except for some maneuvers and limited educations.

Having even sufficient knowledge of how to prepare for emergencies does not guarantee that people would take self- protection measures, so past disaster experience is not the prime factor to enhance awareness or even maneuvers and school education cannot rationally provide useful information as a knowledge base for earthquakes.

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