Vulnerability Assessment of Rural Households to Urmia Lake Drying (the Case of Shabestar Region)

Maleki, Rasoul; Nooripoor, Mehdi; Azadi, Hossein; Lebailly, Philippe

doi:10.3390/su10061862

Cited by 22 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…The lake's basin is home to 5.2 million people, 50% of which live in East Azerbaijan, 45% in West Azerbaijan and 5% in Kurdistan (ULRP 2017). About 1.5 million people in 415,000 households are rated as rural population (Maleki et al 2018), and they are particularly dependent on resources such as water, soil and crops. Against this backdrop, our research was set up in a way to gain insights regarding the consequences of environmental degradation, social vulnerabilities and local adaptation strategies for the rural population.…”

Section: Research Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, the manifold consequences of the disaster and their impact on people living in rural settlements around the lake, as well as individual or communal adaptation strategies, have barely been investigated. After reviewing over 200 scientific papers on Lake Urmia, to date only four papers have partly (and superficially) addressed these dimensions (Torabian 2015;Azizpour et al 2015;Toutakhaneh et al 2018;Maleki et al 2018). Indeed, only Maleki et al (2018) provide a field-based and scientifically sound vulnerability assessment of rural households' actions in terms of environmental change in the basin.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…After reviewing over 200 scientific papers on Lake Urmia, to date only four papers have partly (and superficially) addressed these dimensions (Torabian 2015;Azizpour et al 2015;Toutakhaneh et al 2018;Maleki et al 2018). Indeed, only Maleki et al (2018) provide a field-based and scientifically sound vulnerability assessment of rural households' actions in terms of environmental change in the basin. In their case study conducted in Shabestar, a city in the province of East Azerbaijan, located east of LU, they found that 87.2% of 347 households had a medium-to-high level of vulnerability to LU's drying, and they concluded that their study ''only scratched the surface'' and recommended that future work should ''examine the coping strategies of villagers'' (Maleki et al 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

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

2020

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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.

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Section: Research Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

2020

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“…According to some scholars [4,[56][57][58][59][60], it is very difficult to choose robust and relevant indicators to properly represent local communities. However, this limitation is addressed through an extensive literature review, direct observations, and expert opinions for obtaining representative and comprehensive results (Appendix A).…”

Section: Ipcc Framework Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Livelihood Vulnerability of Riverine-Island Dwellers in the Face of Natural Disasters in Bangladesh

Sarker

Alam

et al. 2019

Sustainability

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Bangladesh is one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world. In particular, its riverine-island (char) dwellers face continuous riverbank erosion, frequent flooding, and other adverse effects of climate change that increase their vulnerability. This paper aims to assess the livelihood vulnerability of riverine communities by applying the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) vulnerability framework and the livelihood vulnerability index (LVI). Results indicate substantial variation in the vulnerability of char dwellers based on mainland proximity. The main drivers of livelihood vulnerability are char-dweller adaptation strategies and access to food and health services. The study further reveals that riverbank erosion, frequent flood inundation, and lack of employment and access to basic public services are the major social and natural drivers of livelihood vulnerability. Char-based policy focusing on short-and long-term strategy is required to reduce livelihood vulnerability and enhance char-dweller resilience.2 of 23 seasons are becoming drier. Challenges such as these are harmful not only to human life but also to the landscape that serves as the basis for successful agricultural activity, e.g., cropping patterns, pest infestations, crop yields, and water availability. Char dwellers regularly lose their agricultural assets, crops, livestock, and poultry, as well as the fiscal and human capital needed to maintain economic success and overall survival.Vulnerability is an emerging concept across disciplines, useful in understanding and assessing the status of people's condition in the face of natural hazards. The major characteristics of vulnerability are dynamic and influence people's social and biophysical processes and systems [2]. Significant mobilization is necessary from the government, nongovernmental organizations, researchers, and farmers to develop successful adaptation strategies [8,9]. The people of developing countries are a vulnerable community due to excessive dependency on agriculture and having low income [10]. However, these burdens may fuel the exploration of potential adaptive capacities of resource-poor communities [11,12]. The extent of people's susceptibility is increased due to the increasing vulnerability to natural hazards of almost all spheres of life, like the social, physical, human, financial, and natural dimensions [13,14]. Though the effect of natural hazards may be occasional, seasonal, or year-round [15,16], the extent of exposure is not the same for all communities.A context-specific approach is required for exploring and assessing vulnerability to draft proper policy and strategy at all administrative levels and reduce adverse effects on livelihoods [4,17,18]. The interaction between people and their biophysical and social environment is readily used to assess the development-policy framework by using specific indicators [19], representing context-specific adaptation strategies [20], to compare and monitor the extent of vulnerability over time, space, and reso...

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“…On the one hand, the water resources that are exploited beyond the basin's natural supply capacity are supporting agrarian and urban livelihoods with significant green and blue water footprints (Hoekstra and Chapagain 2006, Mekonnen and Hoekstra 2011). On the other hand, the loss of tourism (Maleki et al 2018) and potential public health effects due to salt blowouts from the exposed lake bed (Griffin and Kellogg 2004) are side-effects that have considerable socioeconomic implications. The high water stress even during wet periods underscores the prevalence of a chronic anthropogenic drought.…”

Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 99%

Climate-informed environmental inflows to revive a drying lake facing meteorological and anthropogenic droughts

Alborzi

Mirchi

Moftakhari

et al. 2018

Environ. Res. Lett.

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The rapid shrinkage of Lake Urmia, one of the world's largest saline lakes located in northwestern Iran, is a tragic wake-up call to revisit the principles of water resources management based on the socio-economic and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. The overarching goal of this paper is to set a framework for deriving dynamic, climate-informed environmental inflows for drying lakes considering both meteorological/climatic and anthropogenic conditions. We report on the compounding effects of meteorological drought and unsustainable water resource management that contributed to Lake Urmia's contemporary environmental catastrophe. Using rich datasets of hydrologic attributes, water demands and withdrawals, as well as water management infrastructure (i.e. reservoir capacity and operating policies), we provide a quantitative assessment of the basin's water resources, demonstrating that Lake Urmia reached a tipping point in the early 2000s. The lake level failed to rebound to its designated ecological threshold (1274 m above sea level) during a relatively normal hydro-period immediately after the drought of record (1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002). The collapse was caused by a marked overshoot of the basin's hydrologic capacity due to growing anthropogenic drought in the face of extreme climatological stressors. We offer a dynamic environmental inflow plan for different climate conditions (dry, wet and near normal), combined with three representative water withdrawal scenarios. Assuming effective implementation of the proposed 40% reduction in the current water withdrawals, the required environmental inflows range from 2900 million cubic meters per year (mcm yr −1 ) during dry conditions to 5400 mcm yr −1 during wet periods with the average being 4100 mcm yr −1 . Finally, for different environmental inflow scenarios, we estimate the expected recovery time for re-establishing the ecological level of Lake Urmia.

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Vulnerability Assessment of Rural Households to Urmia Lake Drying (the Case of Shabestar Region)

Cited by 22 publications

References 32 publications

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

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

Livelihood Vulnerability of Riverine-Island Dwellers in the Face of Natural Disasters in Bangladesh

Climate-informed environmental inflows to revive a drying lake facing meteorological and anthropogenic droughts

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