An Overview of the State of the Environment of Iran (Conditions & Trends)

In the third millennium, environmental sciences and IT, are the main topics of sciences. Environmental sciences like the environment itself, is a combination of phenomena, and vectors of action and reaction between nature, economics, industry, culture, and politics. This has brought about a complexity, which makes analysis, studies, and researches in environment time consuming and expensive. Description and analytical review of environment of the country, as well as, environmental sciences, reveal some strength, threats, opportunities, and weaknesses. Number of students and environmental fields of studies show a marked increase, whereas, the low number of academic staff in environmental sciences in comparison with the number of students indicate a weakness. However, this weakness may be compensated with recent increases in the scientific journals, and NGO's of Iran. But in the lack of a national comprehensive plan on education, the future goals of 2025 plan seems unattainable. Countrie's operational environmental index have dropped markedly in 2012. Several incidences in recent years have also been responsible for this status drop. Eradication of major wetlands, decreases in areas of forests and pastur lands, threats imposed on biodiversity and wildlife, increases in pollutants, particularly air pollution and dusts in major cities, increases in wastes, dysfunction of water tables, shortage of water, and water misuse in agricultural practices, all are causing the environmental crisis in the country, which is in par with economic crisis.