G Global Warming and Sustainable Development Restrictions in the Face of Climate Change in Zayandeh-Rud River Basin, Iran Mohammad Javad Zareian 1 , Saeid Eslamian 2 and Kaveh Ostad-Ali-Askari 3 1 Department of Water Resources Research, Water Research Institute (WRI), Ministry of Energy, Tehran, Iran 2 Department of Water Engineering, College of Agriculture, Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan, Iran 3 Department of Civil Engineering, Isfahan (Khorasgan) Branch, Islamic Azad University, Isfahan, Iran Introduction Global Warming, Water Crisis, and Sustainable Development Global warming is expected to account for about 20% of the world increase in water scarcity for this century. Global warming is expected to change the global rainfall patterns, to exacerbate the collapse of glaciers in the mountains and droughts and severe floods. Water consumptions in the world have grown sixfold over the last century, more than double the population growth rate, and it would grow rapidly in the coming decades. However, freshwater is readily available as a limited source, equivalent to less than 1% of the water on the Earth. In addition, water and people all over the world are distributed unevenly; arid and semiarid areas receive only 2% of surface runoff, but they account for 40% of the Earth’ s surface and make up half of the world’ s poor. Ultimately, our existing freshwater resources are severely threat- ened by overexploitation, pollution, and global warming. Given this trend, fair supply of suffi- cient water for agriculture, industry, and human consumption is one of the greatest challenges of the twenty-first century (IPCC 2007). The limitation of freshwater resources has become a serious problem in many regions of the world, which has affected the growth and development of different countries. The Middle East region is one of the areas that is heavily affected by the freshwater resources shortage, and many experts predict that there will be a lot of disagreements over the future supply of fresh- water in this area (de Fraiture et al. 2007). According to studies conducted by the Interna- tional Water Management Institute in 1950, 12 countries with a population of about 20 million were faced with water shortages. It is predicted that by 2050, 65 countries with a population of 7 billion people will suffer water shortages (Allan 2003). The Zayandeh-Rud River Basin is one of the most sensitive areas of Iran in terms of the of water resources condition. For many years, there have been numerous plans to manage water # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 W. Leal Filho (ed.), Encyclopedia of Sustainability in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63951-2_470-1