Water: Driver of peace and cooperation, or conflict and contention?
Nikahang Kowsar*
In 2021, Iran experienced water-related protests in multiple cities resulting
from decades of mismanagement of water resources and misuse of power,
exacerbated by adverse effects of climate change. Instead of managing and
reducing water consumption in agricultural and industrial sectors, the
Iranian government continued policies and projects destroying groundwater
and surface water in the name of food security and self-sufficiency. In his
New Year remarks, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader,
emphasized producing more food and reaching food self-sufficiency goals.
Decisions made by the Supreme Water Council, Iran’s higher decision-making body on water-related issues, resulted in some provinces feeling unheard and unseen over shared and scarce water resources. Since 2004, provincial governments have been responsible for water resource management instead of regional/basin authorities, thanks to interventions organized by President Khatami’s administration. Consequently, some of these provinces did not spare any effort to claim larger shares of common resources. Years of large-scale gray infrastructure projects, such as dams and diversion canals, have created tension among neighboring provinces. The water has been redirected to major cities, especially those with strong bonds with individuals in power.
The existence of water was, at one point, the cause for the formation of a civilization. But as time passed, poor management of water resources, discriminatory behavior, and depriving others of their water rights became the driver of contention and conflict. The continuation of such behavior can lead to instability and loss of national security, which will only add fuel to a region already under fire.
While the situation is dire, should the Iranian government choose to put the country’s long-term interests and its people before the short-term gains of a few individuals, there is still hope to turn the page. The clock, however, is ticking, and the current system will not transform without external triggers. In its latest multi-annual indicative program, the European Union (EU) has planned to re-establish its economic relations with Iran. It would be desirable if the EU or any states recognizing water and a healthy environment as human rights uphold Iran to adhere to its obligation to protect, respect, and fulfill these rights.
*Nikahang Kowsar is an award-winning journalist and water issues analyst based in Washington DC
On Climate Justice
Shooka Bidarian*
The world is beset by problems: extreme poverty,
conflict, pandemics, environmental destruction, and
of course climate change. We are now observing these
pre-existing conditions of inequality are being
exacerbated by the impacts of climate change,
particularly on marginalized communities. We have seen
this pattern recurring in all parts of the world. The
countries that have contributed very little to the climate
crisis, primarily those in the developing world, are now
suffering the most from the impacts of climate change.
This impact is the result of climate change being a threat
multiplier and accentuating existing stressors in
disadvantaged groups. It deepens the struggle of those
who are already dealing with issues, such as poverty,
food security, insecure housing and conflict.
Climate justice is a concept that aims to bridge social justice and climate change, showing how the most vulnerable and poorest communities around the world have disproportionately been adversely affected by climate change. And how any solutions to climate change must improve the lives of the most vulnerable people in each country. Climate justice is an intersectional, social, racial, economic, and environmental struggle.
Climate justice is a concept that aims to bridge social justice and climate change, showing how the most vulnerable and poorest communities around the world have been disproportionately and adversely affected by climate change. Climate justice is an intersectional, social, racial, economic, and environmental struggle. This concept highlights the importance of focusing on solutions that improve the lives of the most vulnerable people in each country.
The term climate justice evolved from environmental justice and gained popularity in the 1990s with the first official appearance in a 1999 court watch report. Climate justice is a human-centered approach to climate politics and, of course, climate activism. It recognizes that the climate movement is linked to other worldwide movements such as racial justice, gender equality, and indigenous sovereignty. In climate justice, the climate crisis is seen as a moral call to action that addresses issues of equality, human rights, and historical responsibility. Climate change and social inequality are two of the biggest global challenges currently facing the international community, and as a result, there has been growing awareness and concern about the issue of climate justice in recent years.
The cruel reality is that the countries that have benefited most from fossil fuel extraction are the least vulnerable to climate change. Meanwhile, poorer countries are much more susceptible to the impacts of climate change and have the least adequate resources to adapt to them. Therefore, countries that have in effect caused climate change and benefited the most from the global fossil fuel economy should have the heaviest responsibility to deal with the climate crisis. This is one of the reasons why the concept of “historic emissions and responsibility” has become the core part of climate debates for the past thirty years.
Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, humans have put around 2,500bn tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere, leaving less than 500Gt CO2 of the remaining carbon budget to stay below the recommended limit of 1.5˚C of warming. When it comes to climate justice debates, the party responsible for using up this historic carbon budget and causing the current warming of 1.2˚C to become a central issue. Analysis of historic emissions shows that the United States (US) has created the most at 20% of the world’s emissions, followed by China (11%), Russia (7%), Brazil (5%), Indonesia (4%), Germany (4%), India (4%) and then the UK (3%). Contrast this to current emissions which are dominated by China (28%) and the US (15%). However, a closer observation of the emissions shows that the US, with a population that is a quarter of China’s, has released almost twice as much carbon. When we look at this proportionately, we can see that the average US citizen has benefited from 5½ times their share while the average Chinese citizen has benefited from less than ⅔ of their share and those on the subcontinent have only benefited from 10%. Over the past 200 years, industrialized nations have taken advantage of fossil fuel developments to transform the quality of life for their citizens, and now countries like China, India, and those in the Global South claim the right to access similar standards. To achieve the justice needed while cutting global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, it is crucial to acknowledge the historic legacy of countries that have been polluting the atmosphere for hundreds of years. Countries like Canada, America, Russia, Australia, and the United Kingdom (the five largest polluters per capita) must take responsibility for their historic emissions and do their part to influence decarbonization in developing countries whose major economic source is the burning of fossil fuels. These efforts would require a commensurate investment that enables growing economies to transition to green energy infrastructure.
In 2009, at the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15), wealthy countries promised to provide $100 billion annually in climate funding by 2020 to address the effects of climate change. This funding was intended to provide direct aid to the poorest and least developed countries to move away from fossil fuels and use renewable energy. While this was ratified in 2010, the money was never delivered. Despite the fact that developing nations demanded support for loss and damage at the 26th climate negotiations in Glasgow (COP26), the request was refused by developed countries led by the US and EU, and now the new report suggests that 100$ billion may not even be delivered by 2023.
The argument on climate finance has been going on for years and it is apparent that adequate financial aid to support poor countries is necessary to make progress toward meeting net-zero targets and building a more just and equitable world. However, as the climate crisis is facing multiple injustices created by our current economic and political systems, the remake of such systems will require a diverse and inclusive coalition that is made up of all groups most affected by this emergency.
We need to recognize structural imbalances and inequalities and tackle the climate crisis by demolishing the evil notion that some lives are more important than others. We cannot win the fight against the climate crisis if we do not address these imbalances and inequalities, and we cannot solve these issues without making fundamental changes in our current political and economic systems. A system change is only possible if individuals engage in civic engagement to keep politicians accountable for promises they make and ensure further demand for more action. It is our collective action that can tilt the power and enact the changes we need.
*Shooka Bidarian is Manoto TV’s Environment Correspondent and TV Presenter - Climate Reality Leader and Mentor
Information exchange and distribution of stakeholder’s influence in national water governance policy networks: A case study of Iran’s water governance system
Behshad Mohajer*
The exchange of information and resources implements
water policies through a network of actors and institutional
rules. Due to the rapid change in physical systems, such as
hydrological system processes or socio-economic and
political settings, the structures and distribution of authority
may also deviate from an ideal state. Characterization of this
network is of great importance for identifying influential actors
and their adaptation to change induced by external drivers.
This understanding will contribute to the design of sustainable
and resilient water policy networks. This study investigates the
main stakeholders and social processes controlling a water
policy network.
Characterizing the system’s structure, agents, roles, and connections is crucial to understanding the social dynamics of complex human-water systems. Categorization of stakeholders provides valuable insights into infrastructure operation and resource allocation when dealing with complex socio-hydrological systems. We propose a multi-method approach to first synthesize the available frameworks of national water governance of Iran and then adapt the framework plus social network analysis to characterize influential stakeholders and their dynamic feedback system conceptually. Data from multiple sources will be utilized to map stylized governance systems. The proposed quantitative and qualitative analyses aim to investigate the main stakeholders and social processes controlling the performance of a water policy network at a national level. We will apply our proposed approach to Iran's water governance network.
We anticipate that the proposed analysis highlights the crucial barriers and constraints in implementing sustainable water policies and can be used in developing collaborative human-water models to investigate system adaptation to water scarcity. The learnings from the proposed stylized model are also beneficial to characterizing the dynamic feedback system of stakeholders at the national levels. This process will contribute to cross-case comparison in studying the political economy of water in various climatic and socio-economic settings.
*Water Systems Policy and Analysis Researcher, Phoenix, AZ
Water resources and environmental justice in developing countries; Iran
Ehsan Danshvar
The words justice, environment, and water
resources are individually popular in Iran, but if we
combine them to create environmental justice for
water resources, do we still get the same attention?
Is this combination of everyday words used by
researchers and professors in the fields of
environment and water resources?
The majority of Iran is classified as arid and
semiarid climates, and along with other Middle
Eastern countries, the most water shortage problem
is seen in this region. The Middle East is home to 3.6%
of the world's population but has access to only 1.4%
of the world's renewable freshwater. This means
droughts reduce access to safe water and increase
food insecurity, growing poverty, and the loss of
inhabitants. An increase of salinity in water resources
is the direct effect of drought where corrupted
countries with insufficient infrastructures and poor
management of water and agriculture ultimately
experience environmental inequality.
Two groundwater studies on the Karun and
Karkheh catchments found that the salinity of
groundwater in all the plains within these two
catchments after the construction of the main
dams have increased over time. The main reason
is the reduction of water flow in the Karun and
Karkheh rivers downstream of dams. Now, if
we are in a period of drought due to a lack of
rainfall, water flow upstream of dams will be greatly
reduced and the possibility of storing water behind
the dam and releasing downstream streams will
be increasingly disrupted.
The construction of large dams and lack of proper management of water resources destroys the water quality of groundwater and surface waters. This has, in turn, brought damage to urban and rural residents who are living in the region and their agriculture and livestock. At the same time, residents of other parts of the country, without paying direct costs, benefit from the development plans of these dams and the irrigation and electricity networks. This example also applies to the presence of steel, petrochemical, and refinery industries and oil and gas transport lines, as people living close to these plants experience greater pollution levels in soil, air, and water than those living farther away. Therefore, these residents are more susceptible to various pollution-related diseases, while individuals living farther away benefit from the presence of these plants without being directly exposed to environmental damage to the water sources they use. To gain an understanding of the impact of pollution on communities of lower socioeconomic status, the United Nations and several academic institutions have conducted research on children in the suburbs of developing countries. The results revealed that the rate of lack of learning and academic failure in children aged 7-12 years, and growth disorders in children aged 3-7 years are directly related to increased salinity of drinking water.
Water tensions continue to increase, impacting poverty rates and social inequality which will result in more severe discrimination in access to water resources. These water tensions are a consequence of mismanagement, lack of effective planning on sustainable development, lack of planning to increase resilience, and adaptation of communities to mitigate the risks of climate change impact, especially in the eastern, southern, and southwestern regions of the country. There is a clear link between poor management in environmental activities with unrest and ethnic tensions in communities that do not have adequate water.
Unstable agriculture does not result in stability
Mansour Sohrabi*
Unbalanced agricultural development in Iran has led to
wastage of water resources, groundwater depletion, land
subsidence, soil erosion, rangelands use change, wetlands
drying up, desertification, and rural migration. Continuation
of this process will create many problems for Iran’s
environment and natural resources.
For years, Iran's development plans based on food security
were misinterpreted as self-sufficiency in agriculture.
Improper agricultural development policies in Iran led to an
increase in the area under cultivation and a change in the use
of rangeland lands. This change of land use from rangeland to
rainfed and from rainfed to irrigated has resulted in irreparable
damage to water resources. Continuation of this process will
create many problems for the environment and natural
resources of Iran. The purpose of this article is to investigate
the effects of conventional agriculture in Iran on soil and water
resources. Despite this, a few questions should be answered:
1- What are the factors causing the crisis in Iranian agriculture?
2- Is the policy of self-sufficiency in Iranian agriculture the right policy?
3- Is there a way out of this crisis?
4- Is there a possibility of sustainable agriculture in Iran?
According to the Ministry of Energy, the agricultural sector has harvested more than 90% of the country's water consumption, almost 86 BCM per year with a water use efficiency of 38%. Most agricultural products in Iran result from uncontrolled harvesting of water resources and remain unstable.
Iran annually produces about 110 million tons of crops and horticulture, of which more than 30% is wasted. More than 90% of Iran's agricultural production is obtained through irrigated agriculture while the global average is about 20%.
Irregular water abstraction in the agricultural sector has led to significant food insecurity. It has also caused many environmental problems, including groundwater depletion, landslides, land subsidence, soil erosion, Rangelands use change, wetlands drying up, desertification, and rural migration. Continuation of this process will create many problems for the environment and natural resources of Iran. There is even the possibility of conflict between different provinces, cities, and villages in the future. Given that different ethnicities live in Iran, this can widen the gap between ethnicities.
Studies show that Iran's water and soil resources are facing a new threat and there is a possibility of desertification in most parts of Iran. If Iran's agricultural policies and programs do not change, there is a possibility of widespread migration from most parts of Iran.
Water Crisis in Urban Iran: Critical Geography Meets Critical Pedagogy
Behrang Foroughi*
In Iran, the water crisis is alarming. In the last 10 years, drought
and mismanagement of water resources exacerbated by adverse
effects of climate have been feeding dissatisfaction with Iran’s
government, sparking deadly protests throughout the country.
There is a mounting disillusionment with the national government
and its political efficacy to address the water crisis. There is a
significant divide between communities and local government
where most immediate water demands are met. It is a crisis of
legitimacy, a lack of responsiveness and trust in the institutions
that govern water resources and distribution as it affects people’s
livelihoods. Top-down interventions and decision-making have proven
not just wrong but destructive.
It is time to bring water policy-making closer to the everyday life of
people where they can participate in the deliberations over how the
water crisis should be governed. Achieving inclusive local participation
for improved water governance demands a conceptual framework;
one that clarifies the purpose and the process and can guide
practitioners to effectively engage with and enable shared leadership
with local stakeholders.
This research is an effort to develop a Community Development (CD)
framework to guide the practice of inclusion for responsive water
governance in urban Iran. CD, a dynamic concept with an expanded
toolbox, can be utilized to invite, encourage, and enable stakeholder
participation toward a more inclusive and transparent decision-making
process.
Critical to this is the right of every stakeholder to participate.
Also critical is the awareness that participation is a spatial practice. We should be mindful of the kinds of spaces that can be created to encourage inclusive community engagement and develop collaborative and organizational capacity amongst stakeholders.
Drawing from Iran’s own historical experiences of community-based water management along with the lessons learned from best practices of water management in global contemporary cities, the proposed framework will generate a repertoire of community-based approaches, tools, training materials, and case studies to inform the planning, monitoring, and evaluation of inclusive and locally responsive water management in urban Iran.
Should the Iranian government choose to put the long-term interests of the nation as their main priority there is still hope to turn the page and open spaces of deliberation and collaboration to improve water governance in both rural and urban areas.
The Budding Collaborative Communal, Civil Society, and Academic Water Governance Networks in Iran
Water Governance, Environmental Justice, and Sustainability in Iran
Shahram Kholdi*
The end of the Iran-Iraq war, shortly ensued by the
death of the Islamic Republic’s leader and founder,
Ayatollah Khomeini, ushered in an era that was
dubbed “Sazandegi,” or reconstruction. The new
Islamic Republic leader, ex-President Ayatollah
Khamenei, who had spent the last years of his
presidency largely on the war front ostensibly left
the critical matter of post-War reconstruction to the
ex-Parliament Speaker and new president Rafsanjani.
His vision of reconstruction did nonetheless ensure
that the Supreme Leader Khamenei’s most trusted
and favorite armed force in Iran, namely, the Islamic
Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), received the lion’s
share of state “reconstruction” project contracts, i.e.
dam-building projects.[1]The 1990-2010 period saw
IRGC engineering corporations become Iran’s chief
contractor in dam building peppering the geological
and hydrological topography of the Iranian plateau
with dams of various mantle sizes and reservoir volumes.[2] By the early 2010s, the dams proved to be the primary source of a nationwide water shortage as well as the overall state of environmental injustice in Iran.[3] In short, the dams became yet another symbol of a state maligned by widespread kleptocracy and corruption under whose dry spell millions of Iranian farmers suffered from mass salinization of downstream lands and a great many others became drought-induced displaced persons who were thrust into the ever-expanding shanty-towns and impoverished suburbs of major urban centers. Beyond being a symbol of greed and corruption, the dams also became a symbol of the state establishment’s outrageous disregard for the science of water management in the country in the academic community. Military-clerical centralism and an outdated dominant perception of development were at the core of the administration of this grave environmental injustice. By casting aside scientifically supportable traditions of local water governance, the state is now facing chronic farmers’ riots caused by the construction of Gotvand Dam and Koohrang water canal in Khuzestan and Isfahan province[4].
Against the backdrop of a drought largely induced by the dam-building racket, quite a few communities that were hardest hit are now the various nexuses of the resurgence of communal water governance models, including the historically tried and tested models that were long disrupted by “reconstruction era development models”. The resurgence is nonetheless a hybrid by-product of many collaborative joint civil society and academic ventures that are countering the unholy alliance of the state’s military-security patrons and the aggressive state dam-building rackets in a David-versus-Goliath struggle.[5] Over the past fifteen years, a new firebrand environmental journalist community in Iran has emerged that has provided a voice to all affected communities by disseminating the expert testimony of geologists, water engineers, publicly available archival data, and peer-reviewed scientific sources. The Iranian civil society’s response is certainly comparable to similar endeavors in the developing world from South Asia and Africa to Latin America.
Though one cannot be overly optimistic about the emerging water governance models, collaboration between university academics and water management engineers and local civil society/grassroots can go beyond the herculean task of building sustainable water governance; an effort that seeks to arrive at innovative solutions to lessen the damage done by the aggressive dam building.[6] The emergent water governance networks in Iran have now become multifaceted heuristic networks that not only offer solutions and innovations that are communally viable and locally sustainable but seek to use the available, albeit highly unreliable, legal advocacy methods to halt further dam building and build up new environmentally just and scientifically sustainable and renewable infrastructure.
