From abundance to aridity: The institutional drivers behind Lake Urmia's decline

IF 4.7 2区环境科学与生态学 Q2 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES

Environmental Development Pub Date : 2025-03-11 DOI:10.1016/j.envdev.2025.101205

Mahdi Taraghi , Landon Yoder , Eduardo S. Brondizio , Ali K. Ghorbanpour , Hojjat Mianabadi , Behzad Hessari

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Lake Urmia, once the largest saltwater lake in West Asia, has experienced severe desiccation over recent decades, raising significant environmental and socio-economic concerns. This study investigates the institutional factors driving the lake's decline by applying the Institutional Analysis and Development framework to Iran's Five-Year Development Programs (FYDPs) from 1989 to 2021. Our qualitative analysis indicates that extensive dam construction, driven by a hydraulic mission paradigm, and agricultural policies prioritizing national food self-sufficiency have been the primary contributors to Lake Urmia's decline. A lack of coherence within development programs remains a critical issue. Although recent FYDPs incorporated water conservation objectives, they consistently prioritized agricultural self-sufficiency, contributing to the continued expansion of agriculture in the Lake Urmia Basin. By the end of the sixth FYDP, the lake's water level had fallen 3.42 m below its ecological threshold. The study highlights the lock-in effects of agricultural policies established by FYDPs, which constrain policy shifts toward sustainable approaches. Given the failure of top-down policies to restore Lake Urmia, this study advocates for re-evaluating national development plans and engaging local stakeholders in the development of environmental and water policies to foster long-term ecological sustainability and socio-economic resilience in the region.

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来源期刊

Environmental Development Social Sciences-Geography, Planning and Development

CiteScore

8.40

自引率

1.90%

发文量

审稿时长

74 days

期刊介绍： Environmental Development provides a future oriented, pro-active, authoritative source of information and learning for researchers, postgraduate students, policymakers, and managers, and bridges the gap between fundamental research and the application in management and policy practices. It stimulates the exchange and coupling of traditional scientific knowledge on the environment, with the experiential knowledge among decision makers and other stakeholders and also connects natural sciences and social and behavioral sciences. Environmental Development includes and promotes scientific work from the non-western world, and also strengthens the collaboration between the developed and developing world. Further it links environmental research to broader issues of economic and social-cultural developments, and is intended to shorten the delays between research and publication, while ensuring thorough peer review. Environmental Development also creates a forum for transnational communication, discussion and global action. Environmental Development is open to a broad range of disciplines and authors. The journal welcomes, in particular, contributions from a younger generation of researchers, and papers expanding the frontiers of environmental sciences, pointing at new directions and innovative answers. All submissions to Environmental Development are reviewed using the general criteria of quality, originality, precision, importance of topic and insights, clarity of exposition, which are in keeping with the journal''s aims and scope.