Environmental and Political Challenges in the Region of Khūzestān

Author: Davide Zurlo

Climate change is today the best known megatrend that states will have to cope with in the following years. Globally, it will lead to a general increase in temperatures which will eventually make certain areas of the planet, especially near the Gulf, non-livable during some periods of the year. Moreover, climate change implies an increase in extreme events such as extreme droughts, floods or storms threatening the stability of the industrial food production wasting cultivated fields. On a global scale, an increase of average temperatures coupled with a decrease in precipitation in already arid areas  will make it harder to cultivate land today cultivated in proximity of deserts or matorral areas. Nevertheless, if the legacy of Irān’s Qanāt system is an example of how the Persian civilization managed throughout the centuries to supply water for irrigation and human settlement to vast swathes of land in arid and semi-arid climates, today’s mismanagement threatens to impinge on the food security of the country. This is particularly true for the south-western province of Khūzestān, Irān’s most oil-rich region, where the people have long protested against the lack of drinking water as well as power cuts. In this regard, one question guides the analysis of this elaborate, i.e. to what extent the environmental issues impinge on the political situation with regard to Khūzestān? 

I believe that there is correlation between the two, for environmental issues have the power to exacerbate long-standing political tensions. Furthermore, the incapacity to cope with the effect of climate change, coupled with a bad management of the natural resources of a territory, could serve the purpose of providing ground for protests, while conveying the resentment of a population towards the government. To this end, this essay aims at casting light on the relation between Khūzestān’s current environmental issues, and the political unrest which had characterized the region for the last 20 years.