Environmental degradation at Lake Urmia (Iran): exploring the causes and their impacts on rural livelihoods

Abstract

During the last 20 years, Lake Urmia, once recognised as one of the largest hypersaline lakes on the planet, has suffered from severe environmental degradation. As a result of climate change and human activities, the lake has been largely desiccated. Previous work around the unfolding environmental disaster mainly focused on Lake Urmia's water regime, water level fluctuations, crisis causes and possible actions to revive its fortunes. However, there has been little discussion on the prevailing socioeconomic consequences for rural livelihoods affected by the disaster. This paper investigates the impacts of the desiccation on rural households and analyses the occurrence and different forms of local villagers' coping strategies. We present the findings of field research in the region, whereby open and semistructured interviews, with both regional experts from different institutions and local residents, were conducted. Evidence from this study suggests that rural communities near the lake are considerably dependent on the lake basin's ecosystem services, such as water availability, clean air, soil and local climate regulation-all of which are heavily threatened by progressive environmental degradation. In particular, tourism decline and losses in agriculture have already led to emigration to larger cities, presenting challenges for both rural and urban infrastructures. Overall, the vulnerability of rural households to the crisis was found to be high for reasons such as poverty, lack of income alternatives and a lack of institutional mitigation and adaptation policies.

Changing Causes of Drought in the Urmia Lake Basin—Increasing Influence of Evaporation and Disappearing Snow Cover

“…The lowest annual surface discharge to the lake, recorded in 2015, was only 0.5 km 3 [88]. During their fieldwork in October 2018, previous research noticed that, especially on the eastern side of the lake, many people were complaining about the increasing occurrence of respiratory diseases as a result of a lake salt storm [89]. According to the SPI index, the 2015 and 2018 ULB droughts are classified as light drought and slightly wet, respectively.…”

Smallholder farmers access to climate information and climate smart adaptation practices in the northern region of Ghana

“…Climate change related natural disasters have caused economic loses in tuned of USD 225 billion across the world in 2018. About 95% of these losses are through the incidences of cyclones, floods and drought which is directly related to climate change put pressure on agricultural lands ( Arora, 2019 ; Schmidt et al., 2021 ). Climate related disaster also includes rising level of the sea, loss of biodiversity, glacial retreat, increasing temperature, land degradation, desertification and ocean acidification ( Matias, 2017 ; Schmidt et al., 2021 ; UNFCCC, 2012 ).…”

“…About 95% of these losses are through the incidences of cyclones, floods and drought which is directly related to climate change put pressure on agricultural lands ( Arora, 2019 ; Schmidt et al., 2021 ). Climate related disaster also includes rising level of the sea, loss of biodiversity, glacial retreat, increasing temperature, land degradation, desertification and ocean acidification ( Matias, 2017 ; Schmidt et al., 2021 ; UNFCCC, 2012 ). Climate change also possess a global challenge directly affecting human beings and their socio-economic day to day activities including health, livelihood, income, food security and wellbeing ( Abdul-Razak and Kruse, 2017 ; Adeagbo et al., 2021 ; Ayanlade et al., 2017 ; Norsida et al., 2018 ).…”

New integrated hydrologic approach for the assessment of rivers environmental flows into the Urmia Lake

“…As a result, less than 10% of the lake has remained in comparison with its optimal conditions. The sharp decline in lake water levels has been associated with reduced tourism activity and damage to agriculture in the region, having a detrimental effect on urban and rural infrastructure and the livelihood of families in this area 44 , 45 . The salinity of the lake water increased by a decrease in the lake water volume.…”