Nasser in deserted village

Nasser Nikpay Forest and Range Organisation

Jihad-e-Sazandegi Ministry

NASSER NIPKAY: I don't know exactly the name of this village but I know this is, at the moment, an abandoned village. About more than 40 years ago, the people of this village had to leave for somewhere else.  Sand dunes threatened the village and then they had to leave. Here, we have 120 days of wind.  And sand dunes buried  this village.  The wind comes from the Afghanistan border.

10.00.40.00

The sand dunes buried this village

01.27

In helicopter

V/O: Nasser Nikpay is a fighter.  He works for the Jihad-e-Sazandegi Ministry - which means  ‘fight for reconstruction'. He's an expert in natural resources, and what he's actually fighting is the desert.  A desert that  goes wherever the wind blows it, driving people from their homes and villages.

01.41

Nasser works for the government  to make sure that the recommendations of  the  International Convention to Combat Desertification are properly followed.  Between meetings, he's out on the front line, checking how his troops are doing in their struggle with the desert...

02.00

NN:  As you see on both sides of the road, now it is fixed. Before, I mean 30 years ago, there was nothing here, only sand dunes. Now the area is fixed and most of the people are back to the village and some of them, behind the fixed sand dunes, they are starting cultivation again.

02.15

Nasser standing next to well

NN:  Come.  This well has water in it.  Look.  I will throw in a stone and you will hear. The voice of the water!

02.46

The Iranian people have lived with the desert since time immemorial.  Over 90% of the country consists of arid or semi -arid land.  Through the centuries they have built  and maintained their own irrigation systems - qanats, or underground channels with access wells, to carry water from the mountains.

03.12

Small ditches

On the edge of the village, the water from the qanats comes up to the surface and runs into small ditches .

03.39

Hassanabad is another small village which has been abandoned after a long struggle with the sand.  The ten families who used to live here were forced to leave when the qanat dried up.

NASROLLAH:  This well was used for drinking water.  It's about three or four metres deep.

04.14

NASSER:  So where was the qanat?

04.19

NASROLLAH:  Twenty metres higher up.

04.21

NASSER: Was it a deep one?

04.24

NASROLLAH:  The main well was twenty metres deep and the water ran down to here.

04.27

Nasser & Nasrollah

NASSER:  This small well went dry first, and after that, the qanat which  came from the mountain.  It went dry because the level of the ground water is going  down.  The over-exploitation of the ground water is one of the main causes of the desertification.

04.32

NASSER:  This old man was living here and also his father was living here 50 years ago.  He is a farmer.

05.04

NASSER:  He is glad to meet you here. Welcome to Iran!

05.20

NASSER: When he married, he lived  in this room. This is their sitting room

05.40

In house

N:  You can see the natural ventilation here.  The air came down here and it stayed cool quite naturally.

05.55

Today farmer Nasrollah lives just a few hundred metres from his old house.  The people of Hassanabad dug out a new qanat for themselves a little way off, and built a new village.

06.19

Lunch

During lunch, Nasser finds out that Nasrollah was one of the first people to take part in a government programme to stop the march of the desert by allocating land to farmers in most need.

06.44

Nasrollah on motorbike

Nasrollah's struggle with the desert begins anew each day when he arrives at his field, a small piece of the desert he's been given some ten kilometres from his village.  He's had permission to dig a well here  so long as other farmers can use it too.

07.03

Nasrollah

I'm about to cut off the water

07.21

There is a network of irrigation channels here which can be directed towards any one of the fields.  This area now consists of some 60 hectares divided between twelve farmers. In just a few years, Nasrollah has grown pistachio trees and he sells the nuts directly in the marketplace.  He also grows alfalfa, a crop that ‘s used to feed  cattle, which  helps stop the overgrazing  that used to be a problem in this semi-arid zone.

07.29

NASSER:  The overgrazing, I hope, will be finished and they will cultivate the fodder for their cows. The desert land is converted to this land which you see here. Five or six years ago, it was desert. There was nothing here, really nothing.  Before, he had half a hectare in the village with hardly any water. Now, he has six hectares with more water. And you can see what happened here.

08.02

Since he's been farming his new land and selling his produce, Nasrollah has reduced his flock. He used to have 20 sheep that  grazed on the precious grasses that reduce windage and fix the sand.  Today he has only ten sheep left, and just one of his original four cows. He feeds them on forage he's grown on his land.

08.40

Lorries on road

This programme of rehabilitation by allocating land is one of a number of programmes run by the Iranian government.  Through such programmes, the United Nations Development Programme, UNDP,  is assisting Iran to reforest  areas which are particularly affected by desertification.  And for the most serious cases, the Ministry  has a secret weapon.

09.11

NASSER:  For temporary fixation in the critical area, we use petroleum mulch and we spray it on the sand dunes. The petroleum mulch is one of the products of petroleum refinery. The mulch we spray with a big gun all around. After one month, we plant the trees in the sprayed mulch area. The mulch will prevent the sand moving, it prevents the evaporation. This is not pollution, because it will disappear after four years, five years, and in that time, the area is fixed with the vegetation.

09.51

Removing mulch from sand

NASSER:  We remove the mulch from the sand only for digging a small hole and after that, we remove the plastic bag of the seedling and we put the seedling straight in the hole. It is a type of acacia.  It doesn't need water.  Now 5 centimetres, maybe 10 centimetres below the root is humid.  You can see the moisture, there is moisture under the mulch and the roots of the plant absorb the water from the sand.

10.58

NASSER:  And this is it. This is mulch, this is plantation, this is sand dune fixation, and after that, after four or five years, we have life here. We have many, many kinds of vegetation here. We have many animals like birds, like lizards, like everything. After that, life is continuing.

12.16

Nasser in rose garden

Normally associated with pollution, who would have thought that petroleum could play a role in stopping the march of the desert by fixing unstable sand dunes?  Nasser, the desert warrior, is proud of his country's achievements - the qanats, the mulch.   He is unstoppable - except when he's showing us one of the many marvels of his country - the Oasis of Ghamsar, for example,  famous for its roses.   Roses as fragile as the environment when people upset its balance.

12.57

NASSER:  This is the Iranian rose. The Iranians like  roses.

I like them, I like them so much. I cannot compare them with anything else.

ENDS

13.50