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Global Change, Peace & Security formerly Pacifica Review: Peace, Security & Global Change

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Environmental security, geopolitics and the case of Lake Urmia’s disappearance

Simon Dalby & Zahra Moussavi

To cite this article: Simon Dalby & Zahra Moussavi (2017) Environmental security, geopolitics and the case of Lake Urmia’s disappearance, Global Change, Peace & Security, 29:1, 39-55, DOI: 10.1080/14781158.2016.1228623

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14781158.2016.1228623

Published online: 15 Sep 2016.

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Environmental security, geopolitics and the case of Lake Urmia’s disappearance Simon Dalbya and Zahra Moussavib

aBalsillie School of International Affairs, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Canada; bFaculty of Geography, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

ABSTRACT Geopolitics, climate change and environmental security operate in complicated and sometimes directly conflictual ways. Driven in part by national policies of food self-sufficiency in response to economic sanctions imposed on Iran by American and European policies, the destruction of one of the world’s largest inland lakes raises questions about the interaction of multiple forms of security, and in particular how securitizations by various actors interact at a number of scales. Lake Urmia in North Western Iran has rapidly dwindled in the last decade, a result of unsustainable water extractions to irrigate growing agricultural production of apples and other horticultural products. Clearly assumptions that security is additive across sectors and scales is not the case here as elsewhere, but the Urmia Lake episode emphasizes that they are in fact frequently operating at cross-purposes; national security strategies may compromise other forms of security quite directly. Blaming climate change, and possibly the deliberate use of climate modification techniques for the lake’s demise adds a key dimension to securitization discussions. This matters for security studies more generally now because climate change is increasingly being introduced as a macrosecuritization in international politics.

KEYWORDS Lake Urmia; environmental security; Iran; sanctions; geopolitics

Environmental security?

Protecting environments is now widely seen as key to sustainable development. Indeed it was the key theme in its original formulation three decades ago in the deliberations that led to the publication of Our Common Future.1 This report is widely understood as a key origin of the subsequent discussion of environmental security, and how conflict, environ- ment and policy ought to be linked. However while the universalist aspirations of a common future continue to resonate in policy-making discussions, most recently in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, the rapid pace of environmental change and the persistence of geopolitical rivalries make it clear that practicalities in

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

CONTACT Simon Dalby [email protected] 1World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987).

GLOBAL CHANGE, PEACE & SECURITY, 2017 VOL. 29, NO. 1, 39–55 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14781158.2016.1228623

many places are far from the hopes expressed in either the original report or its recent successors.2

Nonetheless environment and climate in particular is increasingly being addressed as a matter of security. President Obama’s crucial speech at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin on 19 June 2013 suggested that climate change was now the overarching global security issue, a matter that now transcended the importance of nuclear weapons in international politics:

With a global middle class consuming more energy every day, this must now be an effort of all nations, not just some. For the grim alternative affects all nations – more severe storms, more famine and floods, new waves of refugees, coastlines that vanish, oceans that rise. This is the future we must avert. This is the global threat of our time.

In late 2015 the Paris Agreements on climate change supposedly elevated this crucial environmental matter to top priority in international politics. As numerous media critics of the agreement have made clear, this is neither a binding agreement, nor one that has a realistic plan for adhering to the aspirational target of limiting average global temperature increase to 1.5°C. Part of the problem is of course the divided political world, one in which environmental matters are considered of less importance than the ‘high politics’ of inter- national rivalries. Likewise the term environment frequently encompasses too much, and while understood as a global problem, it lacks efficacy as a policy framework because it lacks connection to the specificities of local conditions.

When all this is considered in terms of security, things get even more complicated. As a term that gestures at a complicated series of political discussions and a contested realm of discourse, ‘environmental security’ is most useful.3 Environmental security is clearly a pol- itical desideratum, but who tries to protect what form of security where complicates the use of the term so much that its utility as an analytical category is usually seriously in doubt. In many cases, development strategies that ignore long-term environmental con- sequences in favor of short-term rural production in the agricultural sector continue apace despite the rhetorical invocation of sustainable development. National self-sufficiency in produce to feed growing populations is frequently the priority, and as this paper shows, this can be aggravated by geopolitical rivalries that indirectly cause the natural environ- ment to suffer. The case of Urmia Lake in Iran, discussed in detail in this paper, also makes it clear that invoking climate change as a threat, without taking the specifics of local political ecology into consideration, can be seriously misleading when attempting to invoke some overarching notion of environmental security as a policy aspiration.

Rhetorical flourishes and blaming external forces for domestic policy failures are also a persistent problem in thinking through the multiple entities and policies under the label environmental security. In some parts of the world, defense institutions have simply not engaged environment, or more recently, climate as a matter of security at all.4 In the United Nations, climate has been discussed as a matter of security, but it has repeatedly

2United Nations General Assembly Transforming Our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (New York: United Nations A/70/L.1. 2015).

3Rita Floyd and Richard Matthews, eds., Environmental Security (New York: Routledge, 2013). 4Michael Durant Thomas, ‘Climate Securitization in the Australian Political–Military Establishment’, Global Change, Peace & Security 27, no. 1 (2015): 97–118.

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come up against arguments that climate is about development, not security.5 Elsewhere it has been connected to multiple complicated transformations and dangers, and increas- ingly to alarming predictions from climate science that major disruptions are on their way unless substantial course corrections are made to energy policy in particular.6

Climate change is now enmeshed in the environmental security discussion in various ways that complicate it considerably, not least when attributions of causal roles to climate change are made in international disputes, a matter that suggests there may be many good reasons for resisting the temptations to think of climate in security terms.7

To tease out these difficulties with the notion of environmental security, its recent extensions in matters of climate change and the frequently contradictory efforts that result when different referent objects of security operate in policy discussions, we look first to some theoretical concerns with security, then to the complicated situation in Iran, under international sanctions of varying severity, and to the case of Urmia Lake, which has rapidly dried out in the last decade, and finally to some theoretical reflections on how the various scales and components of ‘security’ play in this situation. The final con- clusions are first that environmental security needs to be treated with great caution in policy deliberations, not least because the long-term implications of failing to think it through carefully, and act sensibly, are likely to be disastrous, and second, to reiterate the basic insight from critical security studies that who and what is secured where and how is rarely as simple as common rhetorical flourishes invoking security as a political desi- deratum suggest.

Multiple insecurities

The scholarly analysis of security has had numerous innovations since the cold war that emphasize not just the long-term provision of social stability as the key function of most forms of security, but complement this with an analysis of how and when political actors invoke notions of security and specify particular threats as being serious enough to require extraordinary measures.8 The analysis of these securitizing moves focuses on the link between rhetorical claims and policy outcomes, making it clear that not all claims generate policy effectively. This form of analysis does focus attention on how it is that claims of threat are related to invocations of particular identities that are thus deemed to be insecure. This heightens attention to endangered entities and may lead to a mobilization of national efforts in the face of a perceived external threat. Given the prime responsibility of states to protect their citizens from danger, this formulation aims to trump other policy priorities. In situations of international tensions, these matters fre- quently add to the difficulties of peaceful resolution of difficulties by emphasizing particu- lar priorities.

5Shirley Scott, ‘The Securitization of Climate Change in World Politics: How Close Have We Come and Would Full Securitiza- tion Enhance the Efficacy of Global Climate Change Policy?’ RECIEL 21, no. 3 (2012): 220–30; Simon Dalby, ‘Climate Change and the Insecurity Frame’ in Reframing Climate Change: Constructing Ecological Geopolitics, ed. Shannon O’Lear and Simon Dalby (London: Routledge, 2016), 83–99.

6John Barkdull and Paul G. Harris, ‘Climate-Induced Conflict or Hospice Earth: The Increasing Importance of Eco-socialism’, Global Change, Peace & Security 27, no. 2 (2015): 237–43.

7Angela Oels, ‘Resisting the Climate Security Discourse: Restoring “the Political” in Climate Change Politics’ in Reframing Climate Change: Constructing Ecological Geopolitics, ed. Shannon O’Lear and Simon Dalby (London: Routledge, 2016), 188–202.

8K.M. Fierke, Critical Approaches to International Security (Cambridge: Polity, 2007).

GLOBAL CHANGE, PEACE & SECURITY 41

It is also important to note that when these dynamics play out in what the Copenhagen school authors discuss in terms of five different sectors of a state, there may be substantial contradictions between policy responses.9 Threats to military, social, political, economic and environmental policies may not be congruent, and none of these may line up well with traditional notions of national security or the claims to sovereignty that are key to regimes’ claims to be legitimate governments within national territory. The disjunction between claims to energy security and climate security in the case of US policy are especially clear in contemporary discussions. The disconnection between American pol- icies to drill and dig fossil fuels enthusiastically on the national territory to provide a par- ticular form of energy security are completely at odds with attempts to cut greenhouse gas emissions, the key policy requirement if reducing the impact of future global climate dis- ruptions is to be accomplished.10 Thus the lack of congruity between securitizing rhetorics may lead to policy incoherence, even though the logic of security supposedly trumps other priorities by specifying safety and order as the prerequisites for other socially desir- able actions.

The initial Copenhagen framework for securitization analysis related invocations of exis- tential threat to a particular referent object, usually a particular state, to the need to take extraordinary measures to deal with the danger. But security does not only work in terms of simple political specifications of dangers to particular states from mostly external causes.11 In addition, complicated regional situations faced by states need to be worked into the analysis. Regional security complexes focus on groups of proximate states whose security situation is closely interconnected; the Indian subcontinent being a case in point where the conflicts between the states there occur relatively independently of either the Gulf to the west or the South East Asian situation to the east. But such com- plexes are also part of the overarching global geopolitical situation where superpowers sometimes penetrate the regional complex by making alliance arrangements with some of the powers in the region.12 This adds larger scale dynamics to the local regional situ- ation. In the Iranian case, both large-scale concerns with nuclear weapon proliferation and regional penetration in terms of American alliances with Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and Israel are relevant.

Which threats are seen as most important relate to the particular situation state policy- makers see as a priority, and how local circumstances place states within their particular security constellation.13 At the global scale, issues such as nuclear proliferation, or perhaps now climate, are seen as overarching issues that must be dealt with, and which require mobilizations by many states in a larger cause, a matter of ‘macrosecuritization’. In the Cold War, the United States fairly successfully posited the threats posed by com- munism to the capitalist world order as a matter of macrosecuritization. Partly this was done too with Islamic terror as a macrosecuritization in the subsequent ‘global war on terror’. Now the question in terms of climate is whether it is to be understood as a

9Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver, and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner 1998). 10Jonna Nyman, ‘Rethinking Energy, Climate and Security: A Critical Analysis of Energy Security in the US’, Journal of Inter- national Relations and Development (2015): 1–28. Advanced online publication doi:10.1057/jird.2015.26.

11Barry Buzan, People, States, and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era (Colchester, ECPR Press, 2007; first ed. 1983).

12Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver, Regions and Powers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 13Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver, ‘Macrosecuritisation and Security Constellations: Reconsidering Scale in Securitisation Theory’, Review of International Studies 35 (2009): 253–76.

42 S. DALBY AND Z. MOUSSAVI

macrosecurity issue too, or if it will remain framed mostly as a matter of external threats to national security by the most powerful developed states that have produced most of the greenhouse gas emissions that are now causing climate change.14

When all this comes to international confrontations, as with the case of Iran’s fraught relations with both some of its neighbors, and in particular with the United States, the complexities of policy and the contradictions between the various sectors of security are emphasized. The regional matters of rivalry in the Gulf are complicated by the US con- cerns with what it portrays as a macrosecurity issue of nuclear proliferation. Given the very different geographical premises for foreign policy in Tehran, it might well be argued that Iranian policy sees American involvement outside its own region as a macrosecurity issue needing attention by the global community, but this is not a formulation that gains much traction either in the region or further afield.15 Sorting out the difficulties that result from these competing macrosecuritizations is important for any attempts to seriously confront the dangers of environmental disruption at the largest of scales, and in particular to engage with the urgent need to tackle greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. Indeed it seems that in much of the climate change issue, the problems of thinking through social innovation and sensible policy are aggravated rather than ameliorated by multiple invocations of security. The case of fossil fuel production and ‘energy security’ in the sense of reliable supplies under domestic control in contrast to global climate policy exemplify these tensions.

Security politics can in some senses be reduced to a matter of choosing which disaster to confront.16 But the more important point here is to note how various invocations of security work at cross-purposes, and potentially dangerously so in this case in particular. Ironically too in the Iranian case, environmental insecurities can be blamed on external threats, both climatological and political, and as this paper discusses below, by claims of a dangerous linkage between the two. The tensions between political and environ- mental sectors are also played out through a complicated series of economic policies, ones shaped but not determined by the pressure brought to bear on Iranian political economy by both United Nations and other sanctions regimes. If environmental security, and climate change in particular, is to become an effective macrosecurization issue, then these contradictions need careful attention. The Iranian case, frequently ignored in more high-profile discussions of putative climate wars in Sudan or more recently Syria, illumi- nates the difficulties of doing so.

Iran, sanctions and national self-sufficiency

As has been made clear recently in the pages of this journal, the relations between the United States and Iran have a long and fraught history going back to the 1950s when American activities were partly responsible for the coup that brought the Shah to power, and subsequently become especially antagonistic following the revolution and

14Joshua S. Goldstein, ‘Climate Change as a Global Security Issue’, Journal of Global Security Studies (2016). Advanced access online doi:10.1093/jogss/ogv010.

15Simon Dalby, ‘Critical Geopolitics and the Control of Arms in the Twenty-First Century’, Contemporary Security Policy 32, no. 1 (2011): 40–56.

16Simon Dalby, ‘Anthropocene Formations: Environmental Security, Geopolitics and Disaster’, Theory, Culture and Society 2015. Online First http://tcs.sagepub.com/content/early/recent (August 2015).

GLOBAL CHANGE, PEACE & SECURITY 43

hostage crisis in the late 1970s. Partly this is also as a result of the geopolitical context of the region which has interacted with internal politics within each state; American percep- tions of Iranian ambitions are connected to Iranian fears of American attempts at regime change and the removal of the revolutionary government, one that it refused to recognize in 1979 and with which it continues to deny normal diplomatic relations.17 Both factors clearly influence matters related to numerous forms of security, and the substantial policy initiatives as well as the rhetorical performances by politicians. The American insis- tence that Iran not acquire nuclear weapons, both as part of its long-term counter prolifer- ation efforts and its penetration into the regional security complex, has until very recently, persistently run up against Iranian efforts to extend their nuclear capabilities as an attempt to guarantee national security in the face of external threats and sanctions.

In the larger regional complex, Israelis’ fears of the implications of their losing their nuclear weapons monopoly in the region also play a role in Washington DC, where nuclear deterrence is still seen as a crucial bulwark to the existing arrangements of inter- national order. Iranian efforts to use proxies in Lebanon and elsewhere as a foreign policy counter-balance to Israeli and American influence have perpetuated claims of aggressive expansionist aims on the part of what is supposedly a putative regional Iranian-led Shia geopolitical entity.

Mutual distrust has fed the confrontation, with the result that Iran has been under various sanction regimes for a long time.18 National pride in technological accomplish- ments, and an insistence that Iranian energy security be understood as about more than petroleum production, and hence involve nuclear electricity generation, clouds the issue of the regime’s intention regarding nuclear weapons. It certainly appears that while the regime may not aspire to make weapons any time soon, the desire to have the capability to do so, as a future possibility to provide deterrent capability, has influ- enced policy-making in at least substantial parts of the government. The inflammatory rhetoric of the Ahmadinejad Presidency (2005–13) aggravated fears in Washington DC concerning Iran’s intentions. Regardless, the international opprobrium generated by the prospect of a made in Tehran bomb has been the major point of contention. Conversely, Iranian irritation at the double standards in the current international nuclear non-prolifer- ation regime, where nuclear weapon states are held to different standards from those without the weapons, and a blind eye is turned to Israeli, Pakistani and Indian arsenals,

17Reza Sanati, ‘Beyond the Domestic Picture: The Geopolitical Factors That Have Formed Contemporary Iran–US Relations’, Global Change, Peace & Security 26, no. 2 (2014): 125–40.

18Sanctions against Iran date back to the United States executive order 12170, seizing Iranian property in the wake of the 1979 revolution. Over the years, the United States has issued more executive orders and imposed restrictions on trade and transactions with Iran notably including Iran’s energy and petrochemical sectors as well as nuclear technology (U.S. Department of the Treasury, Resource Centre; Iran Sanctions, https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/ Programs/pages/iran.aspx). International sanctions against Iran began in 2006 when Iran was referred to the UN Security Council following collapse in negotiations on Iranian nuclear program. During 2006–2010, the Security Council passed 6 resolutions imposing sanctions on Iran, which mainly called upon states to prevent the transfer of any material related to Iran’s nuclear activities (United Nations Security Council, Resolutions 1696 (31 July 2006), 1737 (27 December 2006), 1747 (24 March 2007), 1803 (3 March 2008), 1835 (27 September 2008), 1929 (9 June 2010), http://www.un.org/en/sc/ documents/resolutions/). Between 2007–2012, following the UN resolutions, the EU imposed sanctions on Iran and restricted trade with Iran, in particular in the energy sector and related technologies. In 2012 the EU prohibited import of crude oil and petrochemicals from Iran and export to Iran of petrochemical equipment and technologies (Euro- pean Commission, Service for Foreign Policy Instruments, European Measures (sanction in force) (2015): 32–48, http://eeas. europa.eu/cfsp/sanctions/docs/measures_en.pdf).

44 S. DALBY AND Z. MOUSSAVI

fueled determination to build nuclear facilities, which are seen as Iran’s sovereign right in the international system.

The upshot has been a series of international sanctions, and both the symbolic and practical isolation of the Iranian regime. Domestic policies within Iran have been shaped by this geopolitical context but also by complex factional struggles tied into economic pol- icies and political mobilizations to deal with trade constraints. The punishing war that fol- lowed Saddam Hussein’s attack on the revolutionary regime in the 1980s led to a mobilization of the Iranian state for the war effort and the legacy of these innovations has shaped the role of the state since. American reflagging operations and naval patrols in the Gulf to protect tanker traffic in the 1980s during the Iraq–Iran war confronted Iranian forces directly in the region.

Subsequently the American designation of Iran as part of the Axis of Evil in the rhetoric of the early stages of the global war on terror, and this, despite tacit cooperation in the removal of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2001, fed escalation of the political rheto- ric. Growing concerns about the capabilities and intentions of the Iranian nuclear program led to sanctions by the United States, and European states too. American efforts to have bilateral arrangements extended to multilateral ones through attempts at restricting third- party trade have partly constrained the Iranian economy. However, growing ties with the Far East in particular have partly circumvented the pressures a more complete sanctions regime might have had. In early 2016 the international sanctions regime was partly removed as Iran dismantled the contentious parts of its nuclear program.

Nonetheless the knock on effects of financial sanctions in particular had consequences for larger economic activity and the inability of companies to make international payments have restricted trade in agricultural and industrial equipment as well as food and medi- cines. United Nations statements on the sanctions regime that Iran has been subject to are clear on the consequences:

The sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic of Iran have had significant effects on the general population, including an escalation in inflation, a rise in commodities and energy costs, an increase in the rate of unemployment and a shortage of necessary items, including medicine. … Even companies that have obtained the requisite license to import food and medicine are facing difficulties in finding third-country banks to process the transactions. Owing to payment problems, several medical companies have stopped exporting medicines to the Islamic Republic of Iran, leading to a reported shortage of drugs used in the treatment of various illnesses, including cancer, heart and respiratory conditions, thalassemia and multiple sclerosis. (United Nations, General Assembly, 2012)19

The external pressure has had domestic consequences, and the Ahmadinejad adminis- tration from 2005 to 2013 reacted by taking a number of steps, including attempts to more widely spread what oil wealth there is in Iran. Autarkic policies that emphasize self-sufficiency are hardly new in warfare, or in times of international tension, but they are a factor in Iranian politics that has been reinforced by the international situation. Self-sufficiency has been an important part of Five-Year National Economic, Social and Cul- tural Development Plans ever since the initial attempts to rebuild the country after the war with Iraq. These have mostly aimed at reducing trade dependence, securing minimum

19United Nations, General Assembly, Situation of Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran; Report of the Secretary-General (New York: United Nations A/67/327.2012), 15–16.

GLOBAL CHANGE, PEACE & SECURITY 45

basic needs of the Iranian people, maximizing the utilization of factors of production to increase agricultural production, and increasing the country’s food security by relying on production from domestic sources.20 Key among these policies have been efforts to increase agricultural production, in part to feed a growing population and in part to restructure the economy by encouraging entrepreneurship in this sector in the face of changing macro-economic forces.21 Declining industrial production in Iran and the import of cheap Asian consumer goods was complemented by attempts to spur domestic agricultural production, efforts that have frequently emphasized immediate production rather than any long-term efforts to think through how to do this sustainably.

The disappearance of Urmia Lake

Not least this has been the case in the area around Urmia Lake in the North West of the country, formerly one of the largest inland salt lakes in the world. Its unique ecological status made it a protected area under various Iranian regulations and as of 1975 it has been registered under UNESCO’s Biosphere Reserve designation and also is listed in the Convention of Wetlands of International Importance (The ‘Ramsar Convention’, ironically named after the Iranian city where it was signed in 1971). None of this seems to have had any bearing on the recent fate of the lake. In addition to local ecological issues, the lake used to be an important stopping off point for birds on a major migration route. The lake has rapidly shrunk since the 1990s. Ostensibly about 5000 square kilometers in area, satellite photographs of the lake show a dramatic reduction in its size.22 As Figure 1 suggests,23 the level of water in the lake has dropped more than seven meters from its highest recent level in the mid-1990s, so much so that it is about five meters below its long-term historical average and at least three meters below what is understood to be the necessary minimum height of the waters to allow consistent stable ecological functioning in the system.

At least six major environmental changes are obvious in the region as a result of the rapidly diminishing lake water volume.24 Local biodiversity has been markedly compro- mised and the wetlands to the south of the lake have been removed. Crucially, the Artemia, a key local salt-water species, has been eliminated from much of the area, affect- ing the migratory bird species that used to use it as a food source. What remains of the lake is much more salty than it used to be, and as the lake has dried salt dust, this is now an air pollution hazard for crops and wildlife as well as for humans. Soil erosion in the region has increased. Overuse of local groundwater has led to salt-water intrusions into aquifers and this has been worsened by fertilizer and pesticide runoff. The absence of the large water body will also change humidity levels and reduce its climate moderating effects in the

20See The Laws of the Economic, Social, and Cultural Development Plans; 1991–2016 (Tehran: Management Planning Organ- ization, Deputy for Administrative, Financial and Human Resources Affairs, Center for Documentation, Museum and Publication).

21The total population of Iran grew from 36,393,000 in 1979 to 76,038,000 in 2012 (Central Bank of Iran, Economic Time Series Database).

22UNEP, ‘The Drying of Iran’s Lake Urmia and its Environmental Consequences’ (2012), http://na.unep.net/geas/ getuneppagewitharticleidscript.php?article_id=79 (accessed August 15, 2013).

23Department of Environment, I.R. Iran, Urmia Lake; Challenges, Actions, and the Way of Forward (2013), http://ulrp.sharif.ir/ sites/default/files/field/files/node_1420.pdf (accessed May 2014).

24See Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Zahra Moussavi, ‘Development and Environment in Urmia Lake of Iran’, European Journal of Sustainable Development 3, no. 3 (2014): 219–26.

46 S. DALBY AND Z. MOUSSAVI

region. In terms of conventional understandings of environmental security as a condition of maintaining ecological functions over the long run and ensuring that both local and distant ecologies are not disrupted, this rapid change is clearly not a matter of maintaining the lake’s ecological integrity nor preserving this for the future.

Although local climate change and increase in evaporation have been factors in these changes, results derived from various studies show that the main reasons of significant shrinking of the lake over the most recent decade are anthropogenic factors.25 These include the disruptions resulting from the construction of a highway causeway across the lake, but the major cause of its decline has been the rapid expansion of dams on the rivers feeding the lake and numerous new wells drilled around the lake to feed a rapid expansion of agriculture, and apple orchards in particular, in the region.

Following a speech by President Ahmadinejad in Firoozkooh in 2010 suggesting that the ground water balance in the country was not negative, and therefore ‘everyone is allowed to drill a well everywhere’, the number of illegal wells increased.26 The Iranian Parliament approved the law of ‘Disposal of Unlicensed Wells’ in 2010. Because of this law and the removal of restrictions on well drilling in regions that had groundwater problems, attempts to rehabilitate depleted aquifers came to a halt. Well drilling and illegal harvesting in the country increased suddenly from 103,000 illegal wells in

Figure 1. Yearly changes in water level of Urmia Lake (1965–2013).

25For instance, see Naser Nasiri, Bahram Saghafian, Seyed Pedram Pourhosseini, ‘Analysis of Relation Between Lake Urmia’s Area with Meteorological and Hydrological Droughts Using Satellite Images’, Journal of scientific Research and Develop- ment 2, no. 6 (2015): 306–15. Keivan Kabiri and others, ‘Manifestation of Remotely Sensed Data Coupled With Field Measured Meteorological Data for an Assessment of Degradation of Urmia Lake, Iran’, Asia Pacific Conference on Environ- mental Science and Technology Advanced in Biomedical Engineering 6 (2012): 395–401. Mojtaba Zoljoodi, Ali Didevarasl, ‘Water-Level Fluctuations of Urmia Lake: Relationship with the Long-Term Changes of Meteorological Variables (Solutions for Water-Crisis Management in Urmia Lake Basin)’, Atmospheric and Climate Sciences 4 (2014): 358–68. Raziyeh Lak, J. Darvishikhatuoni and A. Mohammadi, ‘Study of Paleolimnology and Causes of Sudden Decrease of Urmia Lake Water Table’, Journal of Geotechnical Geology (Applied Geology) 7, no. 4 (Winter 2012): 343–58.

26Although apparently there is no official text for this speech, it has been repeatedly cited in subsequent discussions of ground water: see Isa Kalantari; Adviser to the First Vice President of Iran for Water, agriculture and the environment Affairs, Shargh newspaper (May 31, 2015): 4, http://www.sharghdaily.ir/Default.aspx?NPN_Id=739&pageno=4 (accessed October 2015) and Ghanoon newspaper (April 28, 2015): 6, http://www.ghanoondaily.ir/Default.aspx?NPN_Id= 513&pageno=6 (accessed October 2015).

GLOBAL CHANGE, PEACE & SECURITY 47

2010 to over 250,000 illegal wells in last year of the Ahmadinejad administration in 2013.27

The Urmia Lake basin was no exception, despite the fact that, as Figure 1 shows, by the time of the President’s speech the lake was already far below what was understood to be the minimum level for its normal ecological function. Data from Table 1 show that by 2013, there were a total of about 74,000 wells (including both legal and illegal wells) in Urmia Lake basin.28 Estimates suggest that from 1979 to 2005, the negative groundwater balance of the country was in the order of 45 billion cubic meters, but by end of the Ahma- dinejad administration in 2013, this had increased to 120 bcm.29 Urmia Lake is a high- profile part of this larger pattern of groundwater overuse that, in turn, is part of the rapid expansion of the agricultural sector in Iran.

A significant increase in the size of the cultivated area from 158,523 to 450,000 ha occurred in the Urmia Lake basin between 1979 and 2011. Over these years, many rain- fed agricultural lands have become irrigated lands. Change in the cultivation patterns to ‘thirsty crops’ (such as sugar beet) and apples (instead of grapes) has been a major cause of increasing water usage.30

Forty-one percent of Iranian sugar beet is produced in West Azerbaijan and this pro- vince ranks first in production.31 In the 2009–13 period, apple production in Iran increased an average 1.7% per annum. In these years, production of apples was ranked first in the country’s horticultural sector. West and East Azerbaijan provinces (which include the Urmia Lake Basin) have the highest share of apple production in most years. Urmia city, with a share of 10.1%, ranks first in apple production of the eight major cities producing apples in the country.32

Based on the data in 2011–12 from Table 2, the amount of virtual water exports due to sugar beet and apple production is 121.1 and 319.7 mcm.33 Traditional irrigation has led to

Table 1. Number of wells in Urmia Lake region (2013). Wells Number Discharge (mcm)

Legal 50,618 1123 Illegal 24,700 548

27Khabar online, on Website of Department of Environment of Iran (September 6, 2015), http://www.doe.ir/Portal/Home/ ShowPage.aspx?Object=News&ID=885a6635-471a-438c-8d0a-ad67340304eb&LayoutID=f909eec4-f0ca-4b3a-bec3- 464b44626e14&CategoryID=7fb271f5-f2fe-4a98-a24a-83889b582c66&SearchKey (accessed October 2, 2015).

28Mostafa Fadayifard, ‘Important Reasons for Reducing the Volume of Water Entering the Lake and Practicable Solutions to Save Urmia Lake’, Journal of the Ministry of Energy (NAVEN); Special Issue for Restoration of Urmia Lake (2013): 18–20.

29Isa Kalantary, “The permits of drilling wells were tripled within three days due to the Ahmadinejad statement” Shargh, May 31, 2015, 4, http://www.sharghdaily.ir/Default.aspx?NPN_Id=739&pageno=4 (accessed October 2015).

30Department of Environment of Iran, Report of Strategies to Save Urmia Lake. Urmia Lake Restoration Staff (2013). 31Website of Agriculture Organization of West Azerbaijan Province (January 22, 2015), http://www.waaj.ir/mods.php?id= News&file=article&sid=1669 (accessed October 2015).

32Maryam Ardestani, The Analysis of Iran and World Apple’s Market (Ministry of Agriculture, Agricultural Planning Economic & Rural Development Research Institute, 2015), 6–8.

33‘The water used in the production process of an agricultural or industrial product is called the virtual water contained in the product’, in A.Y. Hoekstra, ‘Virtual Water; An Introduction’, in Virtual Water Trade; Proceedings of the International Expert Meeting on Virtual Water Trade, ed. A.Y. Hoekstra, IHE DELFT; Value of Water Research Report Series, no. 12 (2003): 13, http://waterfootprint.org/media/downloads/Report12.pdf (accessed September 2015); Reza Maknoon and Ali Hajimoradi, Study of the Amount of Virtual Water Trade in Urmia Lake Basin (Tehran: Office of Sustainability; Urmia Lake Group, Amirkabir University of Technology Projects, 2015), http://sustainability.aut.ac.ir/?q=node/300 and http:// sustainability.aut.ac.ir/sites/default/files/attach/Virtual%20Water(Tehran%20Meeting%2022.12.93%20.pdf) (accessed September 2015).

48 S. DALBY AND Z. MOUSSAVI

low efficiency; so water use efficiency in irrigation is less than 30%, another cause of increasing water usage.34 Taken together, the rise in agricultural production, the lack of control on well digging and the inefficient use of irrigation water have led to a rapid draw- down of the water in the lake with all the ecological consequences outlined above.

If all this sounds familiar, it clearly is a replay on a somewhat smaller scale of the earlier destruction of the Aral Sea, one that has similar causes and ecological consequences. In this sense, it was entirely predictable that the rapid expansion of wells and dams in the Urmia Lake would produce similar consequences but this did not stop the Ahmadinejad regime from removing restrictions on well drilling, nor did it slow dam-building efforts in the watershed. Clearly the environment here simply was not a matter of security in any sense.

The Aral Sea was once the fourth largest lake in the world with an area of 66,000 km2. In 1950s and 1960s, planning by the leaders of the Soviet Union for increased production of cotton, such as Stalin’s five-year plans for self-sufficiency in cotton and then Khrushchev’s policies for self-sufficiency in rice, led to massive irrigation projects and diversion of water from two main rivers that fed the Aral Sea, Amu Darya and Syr Darya, to support cultivation in Aral Sea basin.35 Consequently, the Aral Sea has shrunk to 10% of its former surface. This significant shrinking resulted in sandy, salty dust storms with fertilizers from the agricultural lands due to formation of Aral-Kum desert that are threating the health of populations south of the Aral sea more than other areas.36 Before 1960, many fish-proces- sing industries on the shores of the Aral Sea provided employment to the local population; all commercial fishing ceased in 1982, resulting in tens of thousands of lost jobs.37 There are many other consequences, such as environmental degradation with an increase in land and water salinization, erosion and sedimentation, diminishing wetlands and biodi- versity, desertification, change in the regional climate and health problems of the population.38

Securitizing Urmia Lake

The parallels are very clear; so too it would appear is the complete failure of the Ahmadi- nejad regime to learn the lessons about Aral Sea policy failure and overuse of water

Table 2. Virtual water trade by apple and sugar beet in Urmia Lake basin, 2011–12.

Crop Consumption in lake

basin (ton) Export to out of lake

basin (ton) Virtual water (cubic

meters/ton) Export virtual water (million

cubic meters)

Apple 172,825 786,693 406.4 319.7 Sugar beet

292,438 1,107,562 109.3 121.1

34See Mukhtar Hashemi, Synthesis Report: An Independent Review: The Status of Water Resources in the Lake Urmia Basin (Department of Environment of Iran; UNDP/GEF Conservation of Iranian Wetlands Project, 2008): 15, http://www.doe.ir/ portal/theme/talab/0DB/2-BS/INV/PROD/bs-inv-prod-lu-en-re-2008.pdf (accessed September 2015).

35Phillip Whish-Wilson, ‘The Aral Sea Environmental Health Crisis’, Journal of Rural and Remote Environmental Health 1, no. 2 (2002): 29–34.

36L. Harriman, ‘The Future of Aral Sea Lies in Trans Boundary Co-operation’, UNEP Global Environmental Alert Service (GEAS) (2014). http://na.unep.net/geas/getUNEPPageWithArticleIDScript.php?article_id=108 (accessed October 2015).

37‘Aral Sea Basin’, FAO (2012), http://www.fao.org/nr/water/aquastat/basins/aral-sea/index.stm (accessed October 2015). 38Gulnara Roll, ‘Aral Sea; Experiences and Lessons Learned Brief’, World Lakes Website (2006). http://www.worldlakes.org/ uploads/01_Aral_Sea_27February2006.pdf (accessed October 2015).

GLOBAL CHANGE, PEACE & SECURITY 49

resources surrounding an inland sea. While pressure to increase agricultural produc- tion and provide Iranian food self-sufficiency in the face of international trade sanctions and a growing population accounts for part of this story, clearly environmental security understood in terms of the hydro-ecology of the Urmia basin region was simply not a con- sideration for either policy-makers in Tehran nor sanctions imposing policy-makers abroad.

Nonetheless, one of the most interesting features of discussions on Iranian policy about the lake is the suggestion by the Ahmadinejad regime, and specifically by the president himself, that climate change (rather than dam building, wells and agricultural overuse of water) is responsible for the shrinkage of the lake: ‘Based on estimations, Urmia Lake encounters similar conditions every 500 years so that it is predicted low precipitation and drought will govern in this area.’39 The Iranian Minister of Energy, Majid Namjoo was more specific in blaming climate for the lake’s fate: ‘Eighty five percent of the problem in Urmia Lake is due to drought. It is out of our control and we can do nothing regarding climate change.’40 The head of the Iranian environmental protection agency during the Ahmadinejad period, M. Javad Mohammadi Zadeh, stated that: ‘Our study reveals that only 34% of Urmia Lake destructive factors are of human origin and the remaining 66% is the result of nonhuman and natural factors, including climate change … .’41 Hence the Iranian regime is apparently powerless in the face of external factors.

Subsequently, with President Rouhani replacing Ahmadinejad in 2013, the official argu- ments about the causes of Lake Urmia’s disappearance changed. The new Minister of Energy, Hamid Chitchian stated that: ‘The present situation of Lake Urmia is the result of the performance of managers, farmers, industrialists and residents in that area, and we are all guilty in creating this situation.’42 The new president was clear that dams (not climate change) were to blame for the lake’s problems and set up a task force to deal with the lake situation. In an explicit rebuke of his predecessor, Rouhani bluntly stated that: ‘Construction of these dams without environmental considerations has resulted in the drying up of Urmia Lake … no one has the right to sacrifice the environment for econ- omic movements.’43

This line of argument was nuanced by the Vice President and head of the Iranian Environmental Protection Organization Masumeh Ebtekar, who ironically argued late in 2013 that for all the attention Urmia Lake was getting, other parts of the country were in worse shape:

The situation of Urmia Lake is the consequence of the traditional war between environment and development. We have nothing to hide. There are 290 water aquifers in worse condition compared to Urmia Lake. However, this Lake currently makes the headlines and no news is heard about the others.44

39Iran newspaper, No. 4891 (September 17, 2011): 4, http://www.magiran.com/npview.asp?ID=2358566 (accessed August 2015).

40‘The Temporary Plans of Government for Urmia Lake’, Etemad newspaper, No.2280 (October 9, 2011):5, http://www. magiran.com/npview.asp?ID=2373675 (accessed August 2015).

41‘Realeas of Water to Saving Urmia Lake’, Interview to M. Javad Mohammadizadeh by Javad Heydarbannik, Etemad news- paper, No. 2276 (October 4, 2011): 1, http://www.magiran.com/npview.asp?ID=2370450 (accessed August 2015).

42Website of The Informing Center of State (September 26, 2013), http://www.dolat.ir/NSite/FullStory/News/?Serv=8&Id= 231081 (accessed September 2015).

43Nasrnews (May 20, 2015), http://nasrnews.ir/TextVersion.aspx?ArticleID=32930&T=SP&SID=0 (accessed September 2015). 44Website of The Informing Center of State (November 12, 2013), http://www.dolat.ir/NSite/FullStory/News/?Serv=9&Id= 232418 (accessed September 2015).

50 S. DALBY AND Z. MOUSSAVI

Clearly here is an admission from the government that environmental problems are wide- spread in the country. Apparently food security, or short-term economic security have been much more important than environmental matters, even if their neglect may come back to haunt future policy-makers having to deal with the legacy of environmental change.

But President Rouhani was not willing to accept that all the blame for the environ- mental degradation that his environment officials were concerned about was caused domestically. At the UN Climate Summit in September 2014 in New York, he again drew the international sanctions discussion into the argument:

If we truly believe global warming is a global problem, we should then accept that addressing it also requires genuine global cooperation. Any step, under any pretext, that may impede such international cooperation cannot but be considered detrimental to the international community as a whole. Nowadays it has become difficult for some countries to gain access to the experience and knowhow of other countries in the fields of combating drought and water scarcity as well as environmental crises, especially urban pollution. Endangering the environment and health of an entire population by imposing illegal economic sanctions against them is never justified, if we were to view it from a humanitarian and health-based perspective.45

But of course, viewed from Washington DC, matters of nuclear power and regional geopo- litics are much more important than local humanitarian and health issues. Nuclear issues and the failure of Tehran to follow America’s preferred policies on other security matters were much more important. Indeed precisely the health and humanitarian costs of sanc- tions were what many in Washington DC hoped would cause a change of policy on nuclear and regional matters. If one of the consequences was the degradation of Iranian ecosys- tems, this was apparently a matter of internal mismanagement, and if it was considered at all, not something that required a policy change away from the sanctions regime designed to force a change in Iranian perspectives and policies.

Masumeh Ebtekar later returned to the larger issues of environmental degradation and, in a statement in July 2015, linked it explicitly to the international sanctions. This juxtaposition bluntly raises the question of the interrelationship of various security sectors.

Sanctions have had multiple and destructive effects on the environment and nature of country. This is while the nature and environment of our country have been greatly damaged because of climate change and successive droughts. Because of the sanctions against Iran and the deprivation of access to new technologies in the environmental realm and to green technology, Iran has experienced difficult times with problems such as air pol- lution. Of course, these problems are the result of bad management decisions in the past as well. In the water sector, we need the latest technology in the field of agriculture since water can be saved by upgrading our agriculture industry. This requires access to technology, exchange of experiences with different countries around the world, and lifting sanctions would provide the opportunity for us to have good exchanges with different countries at gov- ernmental, academic and, especially, at private sector levels.46

45‘Climate Change a Major Challenge’, IRNA, September 24, 2014, http://www.irna.ir/en/News/2738512/ (accessed Septem- ber 2015).

46‘Ebtekar: Iran Has Experienced Difficult Times Due to Sanctions’, Khabar, July 16, 2015, http://www.khabaronline.ir/(X(1)S (2ui4o41yuk31nmoyjvkv2a3y))/detail/436924/society/environment (accessed September 2015).

GLOBAL CHANGE, PEACE & SECURITY 51

In the pre-sanctions period, the EU had been the leading trading partner of Iran. European Union exports to Iran were mainly machinery, transport equipment and chemicals.47 While the trade figures fluctuate, after 2010 in the latter part of Ahmadinejad’s presidency follow- ing the imposition of financial sanctions against Iran, machinery exports dropped substan- tially.48 In particular, sanctions caused a collapse in Italian tractor and agricultural machinery exports to Iran.49 Although sanctions were not specifically on the agro-mech- anical sector, restrictions on the export of oil, international banking restrictions and access to new generations of equipment impeded improvements in productivity in the primary sector. As a study on Agricultural Machinery in Iran drafted for Feder Unacoma, the Italian Agricultural Machinery Manufacturers Federation stated: ‘The most hard hit sector has been mechanical instruments accounting for more than half Italian exports to Iran which has suffered losses of more than 11 billion Euros since the beginning of the sanctions.’50

Insofar as this statement is an accurate reflection of the political economy of environ- mental change, the primacy of traditionally understood national security has come at the cost of economic and environmental security. While it would be inaccurate to say that access to better agricultural equipment necessarily would have saved Urmia Lake, clearly the agricultural sector has suffered in terms of its ability to innovate technologically. The lack of congruence across security sectors, indeed their functioning at cross-purposes to each other, is abundantly clear here; the sanctions regime has effectively undermined economic and some aspects of environmental security as an effort on the part of the Western world to force national security policy changes in Tehran.

Geopolitics, environment and security

One of the more unsettling episodes in the whole discussion of Urmia Lake, and the claims that climate change and natural cycles of drought were to blame, was when President Ahmadinejad changed his claims of natural cycles as the cause of Urmia Lake’s disappear- ance. Instead he suggested that European states had been using weather-modification techniques in an effort to deprive Iran of necessary rain.

Considering the fact that clouds move from the west to the east, these European countries practically impose drought to the countries in the East through removing water from the clouds and, considering the analyses and maps published in this regard, they will very prob- ably use it as a weapon against those countries have the capability of creating civilization and culture. Therefore, it is important to raise this problem at International Legal Organizations to bar European countries from their committing this action.51

47EUROPEAN COMMISSION, Countries and Regions, http://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/countries-and-regions/countries/iran/ (accessed November 2015).

48EUROPEAN COMMISSION, Directorate-General for Trade, European Union, Trade in Goods with Iran, http://trade.ec.europa. eu/doclib/docs/2006/september/tradoc_113392.pdf (accessed November 2015).

49See Carlo Andrea Finotto, ‘Relaxing of Sanctions to Expand Food Exports to Iran’, report says, Italy Europe24 (2015), http:// www.italy24.ilsole24ore.com/art/business-and-economy/2015-07-27/export-iran-170949.php?uuid=ACOAmJY (accessed October 2015).

50Giovanni M. Losavio, ‘Agricultural Machinery in Iran, the Market Can Bounce Back’, Machinery World: Information on the Mechanization of Agriculture, Gardening and Earthmoving (2015), http://www.mondomacchina.it/en/agricultural- machinery-in-iran-the-market-can-bounce-back-c999 (accessed October 2015).

51‘Iran Pursues the Imposed Drought on East in International Communities’, Iran, No. 4797 (May 21, 2011): 1, http://www. magiran.com/npview.asp?ID=2287213 (accessed August 2015).

52 S. DALBY AND Z. MOUSSAVI

In another statement he explicitly suggested that: ‘European countries have employed special cloud seeding equipment to remove the water in the clouds so that rain clouds do not reach countries in this region including Iran.’52 Cloud seeding experiments are nothing new, they stretch back into the 1950s in the Soviet Union and United States, and China has repeatedly used such techniques to attempt to generate rain in specific areas for agricultural purposes, and most famously to prevent rain falling on the Beijing Olympics.

The claim by Ahmadinejad that there was a deliberate European act to change Iran’s rainfall patterns and induce drought is worrisome directly, insofar as if it were in fact true, then European powers would be acting in violation of the United Nations Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques. More so than this it is also worrisome in light of the larger discussions of geoengineering as a possible response to climate change. Commentators on that topic have been concerned that international tensions might be exacerbated should one state accuse another of causing weather changes as a consequence of unilateral attempts to use geoengineering techniques to reduce the disruptions caused by climate change.53

The lack of clear evidence that such things are causally connected potentially allows for politicians to blame other states for their domestic failings, and to create international ten- sions as a result.

While in this case no one outside Iran seems to have paid any attention to the more extreme accusations about weather-modification techniques, nonetheless this points once again to the linkages between local environmental politics and potential inter- national conflict over attempts to deal with climate change. Ironically the recent attempts by President Obama to turn climate change into the new macrosecurity issue in world poli- tics might, insofar as Ahmadinejad’s argument is a precedent, set the stage for future potentially damaging accusations by one state that geoengineering, ostensibly used as a climate change amelioration measure, might in fact be aggravating regional environ- mental matters to the disadvantage of another state. All of which suggests the need for robust governance measures related to geoengineering experiments as a necessary part of attempts to macrosecuritize climate.

Climate adaptation and the larger issues of the political economy of transformation are also in play in the Urmia Lake case. In part, there seem to be lessons in how Iran adapted to the international sanctions regime that are a warning about inappropriate adaptations to climate change too. As Michael Watts has reminded us all again recently, the climate adap- tation literature draws on many earlier notions of adjustment to environmental matters, and ones that do not necessarily deal well with the specific conditions, or in particular the political circumstances that shape how societies are adapted.54 Where the Iranian case suggests the dangers of maladaptation due in part to constrained international

52Shargh, “President: The West countries prevent rain clouds from reaching the Iran”, No. 1251 (May 21, 2011): 11, http:// www.magiran.com/npview.asp?ID=2287787 (accessed August 2015).

53J. Urpelainen, ‘Geoengineering and Global Warming: A Strategic Analysis’, International Environmental Affairs 12, no. 4 (2012): 375–89; J.B. Horton, ‘Geoengineering and the Myth of Unilateralism: Pressures and Prospects for International Cooperation’, in Climate Change Engineering, ed. W.C.G. Burns and A.L. Strauss (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2013), 168–81.

54M. Watts, ‘Now and Then: The Origins of Political Ecology and the Rebirth of Adaptation as a Form of Thought’ in Rou- tledge Handbook of Political Ecology, ed. T. Perreault, G. Bridge and J. McCarthy (Florence, KY: Taylor & Francis, 2015), 19– 50.

GLOBAL CHANGE, PEACE & SECURITY 53

trading opportunities, the larger literature warning of inappropriate responses to climate change suggests similar cautions are in order. Attempts to use traditional development strategies without thinking through their likely social and environmental consequences may aggravate rather than alleviate problems caused by climate. These ‘backdraft effects’ suggest that failure to think through the specific contexts of policies, or the enthu- siastic adoption of inappropriate measures without thinking through the specifics of the regional security constellation, may in the long run cause more conflict than they osten- sibly try to prevent.55

Crucially what the Urmia Lake case emphasizes is the importance of recognizing the contradictory relationships between security sectors and the importance of thinking about the multiple scales at which the politics of security operates. In a world increasingly concerned about environmental matters, and at the largest scale about climate change and its potential security consequences, understanding the interconnections between the multiple referent objects of security matters more than ever. More troubling are the possibilities of using coercive politics through sanctions that undermine environmental security (even if indirectly) to accomplish the aims of what is increasingly inadequately termed national security. While Iranian policy failures in the case of Urmia Lake were a major part of the explanation for what happened, president Ahmadinejad’s protestations notwithstanding, the larger geopolitical context is also part of the story about the causes of ecological destruction. Getting these interconnections clear in thinking about global security, and in particular in the growing discussion about climate, now matters ever more if sensible policies are to be followed and the connections between environment and security understood with an appropriate degree of complexity.

In the terms of securitization theory, the implications of this analysis suggest that inves- tigating how competing forms of macrosecuritization play out in particular places is an important part of using the framework for security analysis. Competing macrosecuritiza- tions shape policy discourse in particular situations in numerous ways, but the key point is that it matters greatly which one sets the stage for political action. Where the orig- inal securitization formulation suggested incongruities between the five sectors related to state security, the case of Urmia Lake suggests that indirectly, but significantly nonethe- less, the nuclear proliferation macrosecuritization has dominated the policy discussion and the conduct of international relations at the cost of environmental security. While climate has been introduced into regional geopolitics by Iranian political leaders in various ways, and most recently these statements loosely parallel the Obama adminis- tration’s rhetorical elevation of climate to the most important global security issue, clearly this macrosecuritization is not, at least yet, anywhere close to the dominant frame- work for political action. If climate change is to be elevated to the most important macro- securitization in global governance, clearly much more thinking is needed about how the contradictions with other securitizations might be resolved.

55Geoff Dabelko and others, eds., ‘Backdraft: The Conflict Potential of Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation’, Woodrow Wilson Center Environmental Change and Security Program Report 14, no. 2 (2013): 1–60. Simon Dalby, ‘Climate Change: New Dimensions of Environmental Security’, RUSI Journal 158, no. 3 (June–July 2013): 34–43.

54 S. DALBY AND Z. MOUSSAVI

Notes on contributors

Professor Simon Dalby is CIGI Chair in the Political Economy of Climate Change at the Balsillie School of International Affairs and Professor of Geography and Environmental Studies at Wilfrid Laurier Uni- versity, Waterloo, Ontario. He is the author of Security and Environmental Change (Polity 2009) and coeditor of Reframing Climate Change (Routledge 2016).

Zahra Moussavi is a doctoral candidate in Political Geography at University of Tehran, Iran, and was a visiting doctoral scholar at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in 2015.

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