Midterm Question
Is the movement towards human security a true paradigm shift? In answering this question make sure to consider which of the authors whom you have read in Weeks one to four of the course support your view and which do not. *The sole use of attached readings is required for the midterm*
Midterm Assignment – Instructions (Read Carefully)
In university courses, assignments (or assessments) are meant to give students the opportunity to demonstrate what they have been learning in the course – and give instructors evidence that such learning is occurring within the classroom. Because of these objectives, it is imperative to incorporate the specifics of what you’ve been studying in the course into your writing assignments. You accomplish this by answering the Midterm question in the assessment via the course objectives and readings from the course. The midterm will cover the following objectives:
1. Describe the role of rapid globalization in changing perceptions of security
2. Identify key threats to human security (food security, personal security, environmental security)
3. Apply the concepts of human security
4. Compare and contrast traditional international relations approaches to security with the doctrine of human security.
Additional Instructions
To answer the Midterm question you will write an analytical essay. The analytical essay is a practical approach to solving a problem. So think of this essay question as you would an assignment from your boss: “I need you to take a look at this problem and solve it for me using things from your IR toolkit (what you have learned, or know). Present a well-written, concise answer to me in four pages. I need it by tomorrow morning.” This is how it happens in the real world, and this is what we want to prepare you to do. To achieve this structure of the essay please keep the following tips in mind:
1. Remember that the analytical essay is highly-structured. Each paragraph should look like the others in terms of style and substance. Writing to the limit of four pages is an art and something you need to learn to do. So, don’t write fewer than four pages and don’t write more. You may need to write over just a little and then edit away the extra parts of the essay to reach the concise four pages.
2. Review your submission and make sure that you have covered the requirements of the assignment using only material from the lessons and readings.
Format for the Essay:
1. Do not use a cover page. Instead, create a header with your name, assignment name, and date. To do this in Word, go to “insert” and then “header.” Do the same thing to insert a ‘footer’ and include page numbers. If you need help, use the ‘help’ function to learn more within Word.
2. Your submission should be four pages (no more, no less) and look like this:
a. Introduction: Introduce your topic & include a thesis. To help you set up your analytical essay include three reasons why you agree or disagree with the midterm quest ...
Midterm QuestionIs the movement towards human security a true .docx
1. Midterm Question
Is the movement towards human security a true paradigm shift?
In answering this question make sure to consider which of the
authors whom you have read in Weeks one to four of the course
support your view and which do not. *The sole use of attached
readings is required for the midterm*
Midterm Assignment – Instructions (Read Carefully)
In university courses, assignments (or assessments) are meant to
give students the opportunity to demonstrate what they have
been learning in the course – and give instructors evidence that
such learning is occurring within the classroom. Because of
these objectives, it is imperative to incorporate the specifics of
what you’ve been studying in the course into your writing
assignments. You accomplish this by answering the Midterm
question in the assessment via the course objectives and
readings from the course. The midterm will cover the following
objectives:
1. Describe the role of rapid globalization in changing
perceptions of security
2. Identify key threats to human security (food security,
personal security, environmental security)
3. Apply the concepts of human security
4. Compare and contrast traditional international relations
approaches to security with the doctrine of human security.
Additional Instructions
To answer the Midterm question you will write an analytical
essay. The analytical essay is a practical approach to solving a
problem. So think of this essay question as you would an
assignment from your boss: “I need you to take a look at this
2. problem and solve it for me using things from your IR toolkit
(what you have learned, or know). Present a well-written,
concise answer to me in four pages. I need it by tomorrow
morning.” This is how it happens in the real world, and this is
what we want to prepare you to do. To achieve this structure of
the essay please keep the following tips in mind:
1. Remember that the analytical essay is highly-structured. Each
paragraph should look like the others in terms of style and
substance. Writing to the limit of four pages is an art and
something you need to learn to do. So, don’t write fewer than
four pages and don’t write more. You may need to write over
just a little and then edit away the extra parts of the essay to
reach the concise four pages.
2. Review your submission and make sure that you have covered
the requirements of the assignment using only material from the
lessons and readings.
Format for the Essay:
1. Do not use a cover page. Instead, create a header with your
name, assignment name, and date. To do this in Word, go to
“insert” and then “header.” Do the same thing to insert a
‘footer’ and include page numbers. If you need help, use the
‘help’ function to learn more within Word.
2. Your submission should be four pages (no more, no less) and
look like this:
a. Introduction: Introduce your topic & include a thesis. To help
you set up your analytical essay include three reasons why you
agree or disagree with the midterm questions. By doing so, you
will set up the body of your paper. The introduction should be
½ page.
b. The Body: The body will focus on your three reasons that you
either agree or disagree with the midterm question. Each reason
should take up about 1 page and include support from the
readings and lessons.
c. Conclusion: The conclusion will wrap up your paper, and re-
3. state your three reasons. This should be about ½ page.
d. Reference List: Include a reference list in Turabian format.
This list will not count towards the four pages.
3. Use Turabian in-text citation with a reference list. Do not
include footnotes.
4. Make sure you have written your analytical essay in the third
person format
5. Use standard word settings for the assignment. Double-space,
12 pt. font
6. Make sure your submission is no more and no less than 4
pages
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Global Food Security: Challenges and Policies
Rosegrant, Mark W;Cline, Sarah A
Science; Dec 12, 2003; 302, 5652; ProQuest
pg. 1917
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reproduction prohibited without permission.
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4. https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journal
Code=cpar20
Global Change, Peace & Security
formerly Pacifica Review: Peace, Security & Global Change
ISSN: 1478-1158 (Print) 1478-1166 (Online) Journal homepage:
https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cpar20
Environmental security, geopolitics and the case of
Lake Urmia’s disappearance
Simon Dalby & Zahra Moussavi
To cite this article: Simon Dalby & Zahra Moussavi (2017)
Environmental security, geopolitics
and the case of Lake Urmia’s disappearance, Global Change,
Peace & Security, 29:1, 39-55, DOI:
10.1080/14781158.2016.1228623
To link to this article:
https://doi.org/10.1080/14781158.2016.1228623
Published online: 15 Sep 2016.
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6. economic sanctions imposed on Iran by American and European
policies, the destruction of one of the world’s largest inland
lakes
raises questions about the interaction of multiple forms of
security, and in particular how securitizations by various actors
interact at a number of scales. Lake Urmia in North Western
Iran
has rapidly dwindled in the last decade, a result of
unsustainable
water extractions to irrigate growing agricultural production of
apples and other horticultural products. Clearly assumptions
that
security is additive across sectors and scales is not the case here
as elsewhere, but the Urmia Lake episode emphasizes that they
are in fact frequently operating at cross-purposes; national
security strategies may compromise other forms of security
quite
directly. Blaming climate change, and possibly the deliberate
use
of climate modification techniques for the lake’s demise adds a
key dimension to securitization discussions. This matters for
security studies more generally now because climate change is
increasingly being introduced as a macrosecuritization in
international politics.
KEYWORDS
Lake Urmia; environmental
security; Iran; sanctions;
geopolitics
Environmental security?
Protecting environments is now widely seen as key to
sustainable development. Indeed it
was the key theme in its original formulation three decades ago
in the deliberations that
8. overarching global security
issue, a matter that now transcended the importance of nuclear
weapons in international
politics:
With a global middle class consuming more energy every day,
this must now be an effort of all
nations, not just some. For the grim alternative affects all
nations – more severe storms, more
famine and floods, new waves of refugees, coastlines that
vanish, oceans that rise. This is the
future we must avert. This is the global threat of our time.
In late 2015 the Paris Agreements on climate change supposedly
elevated this crucial
environmental matter to top priority in international politics. As
numerous media critics of
the agreement have made clear, this is neither a binding
agreement, nor one that has a
realistic plan for adhering to the aspirational target of limiting
average global temperature
increase to 1.5°C. Part of the problem is of course the divided
political world, one in which
environmental matters are considered of less importance than
the ‘high politics’ of inter-
national rivalries. Likewise the term environment frequently
encompasses too much, and
while understood as a global problem, it lacks efficacy as a
policy framework because it
lacks connection to the specificities of local conditions.
When all this is considered in terms of security, things get even
more complicated. As a
term that gestures at a complicated series of political
discussions and a contested realm of
discourse, ‘environmental security’ is most useful.3
9. Environmental security is clearly a pol-
itical desideratum, but who tries to protect what form of
security where complicates the
use of the term so much that its utility as an analytical category
is usually seriously in
doubt. In many cases, development strategies that ignore long-
term environmental con-
sequences in favor of short-term rural production in the
agricultural sector continue apace
despite the rhetorical invocation of sustainable development.
National self-sufficiency in
produce to feed growing populations is frequently the priority,
and as this paper shows,
this can be aggravated by geopolitical rivalries that indirectly
cause the natural environ-
ment to suffer. The case of Urmia Lake in Iran, discussed in
detail in this paper, also
makes it clear that invoking climate change as a threat, without
taking the specifics of
local political ecology into consideration, can be seriously
misleading when attempting
to invoke some overarching notion of environmental security as
a policy aspiration.
Rhetorical flourishes and blaming external forces for domestic
policy failures are also a
persistent problem in thinking through the multiple entities and
policies under the label
environmental security. In some parts of the world, defense
institutions have simply not
engaged environment, or more recently, climate as a matter of
security at all.4 In the
United Nations, climate has been discussed as a matter of
security, but it has repeatedly
2United Nations General Assembly Transforming Our World:
10. the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (New York:
United
Nations A/70/L.1. 2015).
3Rita Floyd and Richard Matthews, eds., Environmental
Security (New York: Routledge, 2013).
4Michael Durant Thomas, ‘Climate Securitization in the
Australian Political–Military Establishment’, Global Change,
Peace &
Security 27, no. 1 (2015): 97–118.
40 S. DALBY AND Z. MOUSSAVI
come up against arguments that climate is about development,
not security.5 Elsewhere it
has been connected to multiple complicated transformations and
dangers, and increas-
ingly to alarming predictions from climate science that major
disruptions are on their
way unless substantial course corrections are made to energy
policy in particular.6
Climate change is now enmeshed in the environmental security
discussion in various
ways that complicate it considerably, not least when attributions
of causal roles to
climate change are made in international disputes, a matter that
suggests there may be
many good reasons for resisting the temptations to think of
climate in security terms.7
To tease out these difficulties with the notion of environmental
security, its recent
extensions in matters of climate change and the frequently
11. contradictory efforts that
result when different referent objects of security operate in
policy discussions, we look
first to some theoretical concerns with security, then to the
complicated situation in
Iran, under international sanctions of varying severity, and to
the case of Urmia Lake,
which has rapidly dried out in the last decade, and finally to
some theoretical reflections
on how the various scales and components of ‘security’ play in
this situation. The final con-
clusions are first that environmental security needs to be treated
with great caution in
policy deliberations, not least because the long-term
implications of failing to think it
through carefully, and act sensibly, are likely to be disastrous,
and second, to reiterate
the basic insight from critical security studies that who and
what is secured where and
how is rarely as simple as common rhetorical flourishes
invoking security as a political desi-
deratum suggest.
Multiple insecurities
The scholarly analysis of security has had numerous innovations
since the cold war that
emphasize not just the long-term provision of social stability as
the key function of
most forms of security, but complement this with an analysis of
how and when political
actors invoke notions of security and specify particular threats
as being serious enough
to require extraordinary measures.8 The analysis of these
securitizing moves focuses on
the link between rhetorical claims and policy outcomes, making
12. it clear that not all
claims generate policy effectively. This form of analysis does
focus attention on how it
is that claims of threat are related to invocations of particular
identities that are thus
deemed to be insecure. This heightens attention to endangered
entities and may lead
to a mobilization of national efforts in the face of a perceived
external threat. Given the
prime responsibility of states to protect their citizens from
danger, this formulation aims
to trump other policy priorities. In situations of international
tensions, these matters fre-
quently add to the difficulties of peaceful resolution of
difficulties by emphasizing particu-
lar priorities.
5Shirley Scott, ‘The Securitization of Climate Change in World
Politics: How Close Have We Come and Would Full Securitiza-
tion Enhance the Efficacy of Global Climate Change Policy?’
RECIEL 21, no. 3 (2012): 220–30; Simon Dalby, ‘Climate
Change
and the Insecurity Frame’ in Reframing Climate Change:
Constructing Ecological Geopolitics, ed. Shannon O’Lear and
Simon
Dalby (London: Routledge, 2016), 83–99.
6John Barkdull and Paul G. Harris, ‘Climate-Induced Conflict
or Hospice Earth: The Increasing Importance of Eco-socialism’,
Global Change, Peace & Security 27, no. 2 (2015): 237–43.
7Angela Oels, ‘Resisting the Climate Security Discourse:
Restoring “the Political” in Climate Change Politics’ in
Reframing
Climate Change: Constructing Ecological Geopolitics, ed.
Shannon O’Lear and Simon Dalby (London: Routledge, 2016),
13. 188–202.
8K.M. Fierke, Critical Approaches to International Security
(Cambridge: Polity, 2007).
GLOBAL CHANGE, PEACE & SECURITY 41
It is also important to note that when these dynamics play out in
what the Copenhagen
school authors discuss in terms of five different sectors of a
state, there may be substantial
contradictions between policy responses.9 Threats to military,
social, political, economic
and environmental policies may not be congruent, and none of
these may line up well
with traditional notions of national security or the claims to
sovereignty that are key to
regimes’ claims to be legitimate governments within national
territory. The disjunction
between claims to energy security and climate security in the
case of US policy are
especially clear in contemporary discussions. The disconnection
between American pol-
icies to drill and dig fossil fuels enthusiastically on the national
territory to provide a par-
ticular form of energy security are completely at odds with
attempts to cut greenhouse gas
emissions, the key policy requirement if reducing the impact of
future global climate dis-
ruptions is to be accomplished.10 Thus the lack of congruity
between securitizing rhetorics
may lead to policy incoherence, even though the logic of
security supposedly trumps
other priorities by specifying safety and order as the
14. prerequisites for other socially desir-
able actions.
The initial Copenhagen framework for securitization analysis
related invocations of exis-
tential threat to a particular referent object, usually a particular
state, to the need to take
extraordinary measures to deal with the danger. But security
does not only work in terms
of simple political specifications of dangers to particular states
from mostly external
causes.11 In addition, complicated regional situations faced by
states need to be worked
into the analysis. Regional security complexes focus on groups
of proximate states
whose security situation is closely interconnected; the Indian
subcontinent being a case
in point where the conflicts between the states there occur
relatively independently of
either the Gulf to the west or the South East Asian situation to
the east. But such com-
plexes are also part of the overarching global geopolitical
situation where superpowers
sometimes penetrate the regional complex by making alliance
arrangements with some
of the powers in the region.12 This adds larger scale dynamics
to the local regional situ-
ation. In the Iranian case, both large-scale concerns with
nuclear weapon proliferation
and regional penetration in terms of American alliances with
Saudi Arabia, the Gulf
States and Israel are relevant.
Which threats are seen as most important relate to the particular
situation state policy-
makers see as a priority, and how local circumstances place
15. states within their particular
security constellation.13 At the global scale, issues such as
nuclear proliferation, or
perhaps now climate, are seen as overarching issues that must
be dealt with, and which
require mobilizations by many states in a larger cause, a matter
of ‘macrosecuritization’.
In the Cold War, the United States fairly successfully posited
the threats posed by com-
munism to the capitalist world order as a matter of
macrosecuritization. Partly this was
done too with Islamic terror as a macrosecuritization in the
subsequent ‘global war on
terror’. Now the question in terms of climate is whether it is to
be understood as a
9Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver, and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New
Framework for Analysis (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner 1998).
10Jonna Nyman, ‘Rethinking Energy, Climate and Security: A
Critical Analysis of Energy Security in the US’, Journal of
Inter-
national Relations and Development (2015): 1–28. Advanced
online publication doi:10.1057/jird.2015.26.
11Barry Buzan, People, States, and Fear: An Agenda for
International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era
(Colchester,
ECPR Press, 2007; first ed. 1983).
12Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver, Regions and Powers
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
13Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver, ‘Macrosecuritisation and
Security Constellations: Reconsidering Scale in Securitisation
Theory’, Review of International Studies 35 (2009): 253–76.
42 S. DALBY AND Z. MOUSSAVI
16. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/jird.2015.26
macrosecurity issue too, or if it will remain framed mostly as a
matter of external threats to
national security by the most powerful developed states that
have produced most of the
greenhouse gas emissions that are now causing climate
change.14
When all this comes to international confrontations, as with the
case of Iran’s fraught
relations with both some of its neighbors, and in particular with
the United States, the
complexities of policy and the contradictions between the
various sectors of security
are emphasized. The regional matters of rivalry in the Gulf are
complicated by the US con-
cerns with what it portrays as a macrosecurity issue of nuclear
proliferation. Given the very
different geographical premises for foreign policy in Tehran, it
might well be argued that
Iranian policy sees American involvement outside its own
region as a macrosecurity issue
needing attention by the global community, but this is not a
formulation that gains much
traction either in the region or further afield.15 Sorting out the
difficulties that result from
these competing macrosecuritizations is important for any
attempts to seriously confront
the dangers of environmental disruption at the largest of scales,
and in particular to
engage with the urgent need to tackle greenhouse gas emissions
and climate change.
Indeed it seems that in much of the climate change issue, the
17. problems of thinking
through social innovation and sensible policy are aggravated
rather than ameliorated
by multiple invocations of security. The case of fossil fuel
production and ‘energy security’
in the sense of reliable supplies under domestic control in
contrast to global climate policy
exemplify these tensions.
Security politics can in some senses be reduced to a matter of
choosing which disaster
to confront.16 But the more important point here is to note how
various invocations of
security work at cross-purposes, and potentially dangerously so
in this case in particular.
Ironically too in the Iranian case, environmental insecurities can
be blamed on external
threats, both climatological and political, and as this paper
discusses below, by claims
of a dangerous linkage between the two. The tensions between
political and environ-
mental sectors are also played out through a complicated series
of economic policies,
ones shaped but not determined by the pressure brought to bear
on Iranian political
economy by both United Nations and other sanctions regimes. If
environmental security,
and climate change in particular, is to become an effective
macrosecurization issue, then
these contradictions need careful attention. The Iranian case,
frequently ignored in more
high-profile discussions of putative climate wars in Sudan or
more recently Syria, illumi-
nates the difficulties of doing so.
Iran, sanctions and national self-sufficiency
18. As has been made clear recently in the pages of this journal, the
relations between the
United States and Iran have a long and fraught history going
back to the 1950s when
American activities were partly responsible for the coup that
brought the Shah to
power, and subsequently become especially antagonistic
following the revolution and
14Joshua S. Goldstein, ‘Climate Change as a Global Security
Issue’, Journal of Global Security Studies (2016). Advanced
access
online doi:10.1093/jogss/ogv010.
15Simon Dalby, ‘Critical Geopolitics and the Control of Arms
in the Twenty-First Century’, Contemporary Security Policy 32,
no. 1 (2011): 40–56.
16Simon Dalby, ‘Anthropocene Formations: Environmental
Security, Geopolitics and Disaster’, Theory, Culture and
Society
2015. Online First http://tcs.sagepub.com/content/early/recent
(August 2015).
GLOBAL CHANGE, PEACE & SECURITY 43
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jogss/ogv010
http://tcs.sagepub.com/content/early/recent
hostage crisis in the late 1970s. Partly this is also as a result of
the geopolitical context of
the region which has interacted with internal politics within
each state; American percep-
tions of Iranian ambitions are connected to Iranian fears of
19. American attempts at regime
change and the removal of the revolutionary government, one
that it refused to recognize
in 1979 and with which it continues to deny normal diplomatic
relations.17 Both factors
clearly influence matters related to numerous forms of security,
and the substantial
policy initiatives as well as the rhetorical performances by
politicians. The American insis-
tence that Iran not acquire nuclear weapons, both as part of its
long-term counter prolifer-
ation efforts and its penetration into the regional security
complex, has until very recently,
persistently run up against Iranian efforts to extend their
nuclear capabilities as an attempt
to guarantee national security in the face of external threats and
sanctions.
In the larger regional complex, Israelis’ fears of the
implications of their losing their
nuclear weapons monopoly in the region also play a role in
Washington DC, where
nuclear deterrence is still seen as a crucial bulwark to the
existing arrangements of inter-
national order. Iranian efforts to use proxies in Lebanon and
elsewhere as a foreign policy
counter-balance to Israeli and American influence have
perpetuated claims of aggressive
expansionist aims on the part of what is supposedly a putative
regional Iranian-led Shia
geopolitical entity.
Mutual distrust has fed the confrontation, with the result that
Iran has been under
various sanction regimes for a long time.18 National pride in
technological accomplish-
20. ments, and an insistence that Iranian energy security be
understood as about more
than petroleum production, and hence involve nuclear
electricity generation, clouds the
issue of the regime’s intention regarding nuclear weapons. It
certainly appears that
while the regime may not aspire to make weapons any time
soon, the desire to have
the capability to do so, as a future possibility to provide
deterrent capability, has influ-
enced policy-making in at least substantial parts of the
government. The inflammatory
rhetoric of the Ahmadinejad Presidency (2005–13) aggravated
fears in Washington DC
concerning Iran’s intentions. Regardless, the international
opprobrium generated by the
prospect of a made in Tehran bomb has been the major point of
contention. Conversely,
Iranian irritation at the double standards in the current
international nuclear non-prolifer-
ation regime, where nuclear weapon states are held to different
standards from those
without the weapons, and a blind eye is turned to Israeli,
Pakistani and Indian arsenals,
17Reza Sanati, ‘Beyond the Domestic Picture: The Geopolitical
Factors That Have Formed Contemporary Iran–US Relations’,
Global Change, Peace & Security 26, no. 2 (2014): 125–40.
18Sanctions against Iran date back to the United States
executive order 12170, seizing Iranian property in the wake of
the
1979 revolution. Over the years, the United States has issued
more executive orders and imposed restrictions on trade
and transactions with Iran notably including Iran’s energy and
petrochemical sectors as well as nuclear technology (U.S.
21. Department of the Treasury, Resource Centre; Iran Sanctions,
https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/
Programs/pages/iran.aspx). International sanctions against Iran
began in 2006 when Iran was referred to the UN Security
Council following collapse in negotiations on Iranian nuclear
program. During 2006–2010, the Security Council passed 6
resolutions imposing sanctions on Iran, which mainly called
upon states to prevent the transfer of any material related to
Iran’s nuclear activities (United Nations Security Council,
Resolutions 1696 (31 July 2006), 1737 (27 December 2006),
1747
(24 March 2007), 1803 (3 March 2008), 1835 (27 September
2008), 1929 (9 June 2010), http://www.un.org/en/sc/
documents/resolutions/). Between 2007–2012, following the UN
resolutions, the EU imposed sanctions on Iran and
restricted trade with Iran, in particular in the energy sector and
related technologies. In 2012 the EU prohibited
import of crude oil and petrochemicals from Iran and export to
Iran of petrochemical equipment and technologies (Euro-
pean Commission, Service for Foreign Policy Instruments,
European Measures (sanction in force) (2015): 32–48,
http://eeas.
europa.eu/cfsp/sanctions/docs/measures_en.pdf).
44 S. DALBY AND Z. MOUSSAVI
https://www.treasury.gov/resource-
center/sanctions/Programs/pages/iran.aspx
https://www.treasury.gov/resource-
center/sanctions/Programs/pages/iran.aspx
http://www.un.org/en/sc/documents/resolutions/
http://www.un.org/en/sc/documents/resolutions/
http://eeas.europa.eu/cfsp/sanctions/docs/measures_en.pdf
http://eeas.europa.eu/cfsp/sanctions/docs/measures_en.pdf
22. fueled determination to build nuclear facilities, which are seen
as Iran’s sovereign right in
the international system.
The upshot has been a series of international sanctions, and both
the symbolic and
practical isolation of the Iranian regime. Domestic policies
within Iran have been shaped
by this geopolitical context but also by complex factional
struggles tied into economic pol-
icies and political mobilizations to deal with trade constraints.
The punishing war that fol-
lowed Saddam Hussein’s attack on the revolutionary regime in
the 1980s led to a
mobilization of the Iranian state for the war effort and the
legacy of these innovations
has shaped the role of the state since. American reflagging
operations and naval patrols
in the Gulf to protect tanker traffic in the 1980s during the
Iraq–Iran war confronted
Iranian forces directly in the region.
Subsequently the American designation of Iran as part of the
Axis of Evil in the rhetoric
of the early stages of the global war on terror, and this, despite
tacit cooperation in the
removal of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2001, fed
escalation of the political rheto-
ric. Growing concerns about the capabilities and intentions of
the Iranian nuclear program
led to sanctions by the United States, and European states too.
American efforts to have
bilateral arrangements extended to multilateral ones through
attempts at restricting third-
party trade have partly constrained the Iranian economy.
However, growing ties with the
23. Far East in particular have partly circumvented the pressures a
more complete sanctions
regime might have had. In early 2016 the international sanctions
regime was partly
removed as Iran dismantled the contentious parts of its nuclear
program.
Nonetheless the knock on effects of financial sanctions in
particular had consequences
for larger economic activity and the inability of companies to
make international payments
have restricted trade in agricultural and industrial equipment as
well as food and medi-
cines. United Nations statements on the sanctions regime that
Iran has been subject to
are clear on the consequences:
The sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic of Iran have had
significant effects on the
general population, including an escalation in inflation, a rise in
commodities and energy
costs, an increase in the rate of unemployment and a shortage of
necessary items, including
medicine. … Even companies that have obtained the requisite
license to import food and
medicine are facing difficulties in finding third-country banks
to process the transactions.
Owing to payment problems, several medical companies have
stopped exporting medicines
to the Islamic Republic of Iran, leading to a reported shortage
of drugs used in the treatment of
various illnesses, including cancer, heart and respiratory
conditions, thalassemia and multiple
sclerosis. (United Nations, General Assembly, 2012)19
The external pressure has had domestic consequences, and the
24. Ahmadinejad adminis-
tration from 2005 to 2013 reacted by taking a number of steps,
including attempts to
more widely spread what oil wealth there is in Iran. Autarkic
policies that emphasize
self-sufficiency are hardly new in warfare, or in times of
international tension, but they
are a factor in Iranian politics that has been reinforced by the
international situation.
Self-sufficiency has been an important part of Five-Year
National Economic, Social and Cul-
tural Development Plans ever since the initial attempts to
rebuild the country after the war
with Iraq. These have mostly aimed at reducing trade
dependence, securing minimum
19United Nations, General Assembly, Situation of Human
Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran; Report of the Secretary-
General
(New York: United Nations A/67/327.2012), 15–16.
GLOBAL CHANGE, PEACE & SECURITY 45
basic needs of the Iranian people, maximizing the utilization of
factors of production to
increase agricultural production, and increasing the country’s
food security by relying
on production from domestic sources.20 Key among these
policies have been efforts to
increase agricultural production, in part to feed a growing
population and in part to
restructure the economy by encouraging entrepreneurship in this
sector in the face of
changing macro-economic forces.21 Declining industrial
25. production in Iran and the
import of cheap Asian consumer goods was complemented by
attempts to spur domestic
agricultural production, efforts that have frequently emphasized
immediate production
rather than any long-term efforts to think through how to do this
sustainably.
The disappearance of Urmia Lake
Not least this has been the case in the area around Urmia Lake
in the North West of the
country, formerly one of the largest inland salt lakes in the
world. Its unique ecological
status made it a protected area under various Iranian regulations
and as of 1975 it has
been registered under UNESCO’s Biosphere Reserve
designation and also is listed in the
Convention of Wetlands of International Importance (The
‘Ramsar Convention’, ironically
named after the Iranian city where it was signed in 1971). None
of this seems to have
had any bearing on the recent fate of the lake. In addition to
local ecological issues, the
lake used to be an important stopping off point for birds on a
major migration route.
The lake has rapidly shrunk since the 1990s. Ostensibly about
5000 square kilometers
in area, satellite photographs of the lake show a dramatic
reduction in its size.22 As
Figure 1 suggests,23 the level of water in the lake has dropped
more than seven meters
from its highest recent level in the mid-1990s, so much so that
it is about five meters
below its long-term historical average and at least three meters
below what is understood
26. to be the necessary minimum height of the waters to allow
consistent stable ecological
functioning in the system.
At least six major environmental changes are obvious in the
region as a result of the
rapidly diminishing lake water volume.24 Local biodiversity has
been markedly compro-
mised and the wetlands to the south of the lake have been
removed. Crucially, the
Artemia, a key local salt-water species, has been eliminated
from much of the area, affect-
ing the migratory bird species that used to use it as a food
source. What remains of the lake
is much more salty than it used to be, and as the lake has dried
salt dust, this is now an air
pollution hazard for crops and wildlife as well as for humans.
Soil erosion in the region has
increased. Overuse of local groundwater has led to salt-water
intrusions into aquifers and
this has been worsened by fertilizer and pesticide runoff. The
absence of the large water
body will also change humidity levels and reduce its climate
moderating effects in the
20See The Laws of the Economic, Social, and Cultural
Development Plans; 1991–2016 (Tehran: Management Planning
Organ-
ization, Deputy for Administrative, Financial and Human
Resources Affairs, Center for Documentation, Museum and
Publication).
21The total population of Iran grew from 36,393,000 in 1979 to
76,038,000 in 2012 (Central Bank of Iran, Economic Time
Series Database).
27. 22UNEP, ‘The Drying of Iran’s Lake Urmia and its
Environmental Consequences’ (2012), http://na.unep.net/geas/
getuneppagewitharticleidscript.php?article_id=79 (accessed
August 15, 2013).
23Department of Environment, I.R. Iran, Urmia Lake;
Challenges, Actions, and the Way of Forward (2013),
http://ulrp.sharif.ir/
sites/default/files/field/files/node_1420.pdf (accessed May
2014).
24See Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Zahra Moussavi,
‘Development and Environment in Urmia Lake of Iran’,
European
Journal of Sustainable Development 3, no. 3 (2014): 219–26.
46 S. DALBY AND Z. MOUSSAVI
http://na.unep.net/geas/getuneppagewitharticleidscript.php?artic
le_id=79
http://na.unep.net/geas/getuneppagewitharticleidscript.php?artic
le_id=79
http://ulrp.sharif.ir/sites/default/files/field/files/node_1420.pdf
http://ulrp.sharif.ir/sites/default/files/field/files/node_1420.pdf
region. In terms of conventional understandings of
environmental security as a condition
of maintaining ecological functions over the long run and
ensuring that both local and
distant ecologies are not disrupted, this rapid change is clearly
not a matter of maintaining
the lake’s ecological integrity nor preserving this for the future.
Although local climate change and increase in evaporation have
been factors in these
28. changes, results derived from various studies show that the
main reasons of significant
shrinking of the lake over the most recent decade are
anthropogenic factors.25 These
include the disruptions resulting from the construction of a
highway causeway across
the lake, but the major cause of its decline has been the rapid
expansion of dams on
the rivers feeding the lake and numerous new wells drilled
around the lake to feed a
rapid expansion of agriculture, and apple orchards in particular,
in the region.
Following a speech by President Ahmadinejad in Firoozkooh in
2010 suggesting that
the ground water balance in the country was not negative, and
therefore ‘everyone is
allowed to drill a well everywhere’, the number of illegal wells
increased.26 The Iranian
Parliament approved the law of ‘Disposal of Unlicensed Wells’
in 2010. Because of this
law and the removal of restrictions on well drilling in regions
that had groundwater
problems, attempts to rehabilitate depleted aquifers came to a
halt. Well drilling and
illegal harvesting in the country increased suddenly from
103,000 illegal wells in
Figure 1. Yearly changes in water level of Urmia Lake (1965–
2013).
25For instance, see Naser Nasiri, Bahram Saghafian, Seyed
Pedram Pourhosseini, ‘Analysis of Relation Between Lake
Urmia’s
Area with Meteorological and Hydrological Droughts Using
Satellite Images’, Journal of scientific Research and Develop-
29. ment 2, no. 6 (2015): 306–15. Keivan Kabiri and others,
‘Manifestation of Remotely Sensed Data Coupled With Field
Measured Meteorological Data for an Assessment of
Degradation of Urmia Lake, Iran’, Asia Pacific Conference on
Environ-
mental Science and Technology Advanced in Biomedical
Engineering 6 (2012): 395–401. Mojtaba Zoljoodi, Ali
Didevarasl,
‘Water-Level Fluctuations of Urmia Lake: Relationship with the
Long-Term Changes of Meteorological Variables (
Solution
s
for Water-Crisis Management in Urmia Lake Basin)’,
Atmospheric and Climate Sciences 4 (2014): 358–68. Raziyeh
Lak,
J. Darvishikhatuoni and A. Mohammadi, ‘Study of
Paleolimnology and Causes of Sudden Decrease of Urmia Lake
Water Table’, Journal of Geotechnical Geology (Applied
Geology) 7, no. 4 (Winter 2012): 343–58.
26Although apparently there is no official text for this speech,
it has been repeatedly cited in subsequent discussions of
ground water: see Isa Kalantari; Adviser to the First Vice
President of Iran for Water, agriculture and the environment
Affairs, Shargh newspaper (May 31, 2015): 4,
30. http://www.sharghdaily.ir/Default.aspx?NPN_Id=739&pageno=
4 (accessed
October 2015) and Ghanoon newspaper (April 28, 2015): 6,
http://www.ghanoondaily.ir/Default.aspx?NPN_Id=
513&pageno=6 (accessed October 2015).
GLOBAL CHANGE, PEACE & SECURITY 47
http://www.sharghdaily.ir/Default.aspx?NPN_Id=739&pageno=
4
http://www.ghanoondaily.ir/Default.aspx?NPN_Id=513&pageno
=6
http://www.ghanoondaily.ir/Default.aspx?NPN_Id=513&pageno
=6
2010 to over 250,000 illegal wells in last year of the
Ahmadinejad administration in
2013.27
The Urmia Lake basin was no exception, despite the fact that, as
Figure 1 shows, by the
time of the President’s speech the lake was already far below
what was understood to be
the minimum level for its normal ecological function. Data from
31. Table 1 show that by 2013,
there were a total of about 74,000 wells (including both legal
and illegal wells) in Urmia
Lake basin.28 Estimates suggest that from 1979 to 2005, the
negative groundwater
balance of the country was in the order of 45 billion cubic
meters, but by end of the Ahma-
dinejad administration in 2013, this had increased to 120
bcm.29 Urmia Lake is a high-
profile part of this larger pattern of groundwater overuse that,
in turn, is part of the
rapid expansion of the agricultural sector in Iran.
A significant increase in the size of the cultivated area from
158,523 to 450,000 ha
occurred in the Urmia Lake basin between 1979 and 2011. Over
these years, many rain-
fed agricultural lands have become irrigated lands. Change in
the cultivation patterns to
‘thirsty crops’ (such as sugar beet) and apples (instead of
grapes) has been a major
cause of increasing water usage.30
Forty-one percent of Iranian sugar beet is produced in West
Azerbaijan and this pro-
32. vince ranks first in production.31 In the 2009–13 period, apple
production in Iran increased
an average 1.7% per annum. In these years, production of apples
was ranked first in the
country’s horticultural sector. West and East Azerbaijan
provinces (which include the
Urmia Lake Basin) have the highest share of apple production in
most years. Urmia city,
with a share of 10.1%, ranks first in apple production of the
eight major cities producing
apples in the country.32
Based on the data in 2011–12 from Table 2, the amount of
virtual water exports due to
sugar beet and apple production is 121.1 and 319.7 mcm.33
Traditional irrigation has led to
Table 1. Number of wells in Urmia Lake region (2013).
Wells Number Discharge (mcm)
Legal 50,618 1123
Illegal 24,700 548
27Khabar online, on Website of Department of Environment of
Iran (September 6, 2015), http://www.doe.ir/Portal/Home/
