Human-Made Disaster at Lake Urmia (Iran)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Matthias Schmidt
• Subject Area: Human Geography
• Term: from 2019 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 421574050

Human-induced climate change and natural resource exploitation threaten societies and ecosystems worldwide. Lake Urmia, located in north-western Iran and forming the world’s second largest hypersaline lake, has been drying up since the mid-1990s, mainly as a result of excessive water consumption in its catchment area. Consequences of the lake’s desiccation include the degradation of land and freshwater resources, public health and food security concerns, economic decline and unemployment, thus creating an increasingly difficult socio-economic context for 6.5 million people living in the basin’s surroundings. All of these issues make Lake Urmia an ideal case study for research on the interplay between disastrous environmental change, socio-economic consequences and local adaptation strategies. The research project contains two working packages (WPs), with WP1 investigating the current reasons for and effects of potentially environmentally-induced migration, and WP2 studying transformations of locally practiced water and resource management. Both working packages are field-based, with the objectives being approached methodologically by a mix of quantitative household surveys and semi-structured and narrative interviews. The goal of WP1 is to provide details and help build hypotheses on how and how far environmental degradation induces migration and other adaptation strategies of individuals, households and communities affected by the disaster. Environmental, economic, social and political factors are interrelated and need to be examined jointly, in order to understand the roles environmental factors play in population movements. Moreover, WP1 seeks to provide concrete evidence on how migration itself can serve as an adaptation strategy and how it can in turn support other forms of adaptation in the area of origin, for instance through translocal networks and remittances. The goal of WP2 is to identify and analyse social, economic, political, institutional and cultural dimensions of water management and the hydro-social cycle from the perspective of local farmers in the basin region. It focuses on how water management is executed in the Lake Urmia region and how it has changed recently in light of massive environmental stress. WP2 tries to identify points of friction between state regulations, integrated water management solutions and local interests. This contribution will be achieved by analysing empirically locally practiced water management along with socio-cultural, socio-political and socio-economic traditions and framework conditions.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants