Financial Tribune - Followed by Qatar, Israel and Lebanon, Iran is ranked 4th on the list of countries with extremely high water risk.

The Tehran-based Persian-language economic newspaper Donya-e-Eqtesad, a sister publication of Financial Tribune, quoted Friday a report issued by Washington DC-based World Resources Institute�s Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas.

Iran's agriculture, industry and households are consuming 80% of available surface and groundwater in an average year, it said.

Nearly 1.8 billion people or a quarter of the world's population live in 17 countries including Iran. They all are facing extremely high water stress close to "day zero" conditions when the taps run dry, the report warned.

"What is worrying about Iran is that households' consumption [scored at 4.6] is exceeding that of farming [at 4.58] and industrial [at 4.28] sectors," WRI said.