Rethinking assessment of drought impacts: a systemic approach towards sustainability

Abstract

Although impacting primarily economic sectors, droughts may also initiate dynamic mechanisms that have socio-environmental consequences on sustainability of the impacted areas. To date, most research has dealt with the economic impacts of droughts, with minimal attention being paid to the dynamics of damaging mechanisms associated with socio-environmental impacts. Using a systemic approach, this paper develops a method of identifying the dynamic structures responsible for the consequences of drought. Considering the impacts of recent droughts in Iran, the paper presents a conceptual model, underpinned by a Limits to Growth archetype to explain how different drought impacts are triggered. Moreover, adopting the Viability Loops concept, a range of strategies and indices are suggested as monitoring tools to sustain socio-economic life in a drought-impacted area. The provinces of Hamadan (with water abundance), and Yazd and Isfahan (with water scarcity) in Iran have been selected to illustrate the proposed methodology. Results show a higher vulnerability to droughts in the water-rich region due to dependence on water abundance as opposed to the water-poor regions, which are well adapted to water scarcity conditions.

Determining the Main Factors in Declining the Urmia Lake Level by Using System Dynamics Modeling

“…This method has been applied in many environmental and water resource studies (e.g. Ford 1996;Simonovic and Ahmad 2002;Xu et al 2002;Simonovic and Li 2004;Tidewell et al 2004;Ahmad and Simonovic 2006;Bagheri 2006;Feng and Huang 2008;Yang et al 2008;Winz et al 2009;Gastélum et al 2010;Ahmad and Prashar 2010;Shahbazbegian and Bagheri 2010) and based on their outcomes it is very powerful method to simulate water resources and their managing scenarios.…”

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