Iran’s Environmental Challenges and Movements on the Margins : Beyond the Centre

Interrogates the state-centric approach to Iran's environmental crisis, reframing it as a profoundly political issue.

This book shifts the focus of Iran's environmental crises from policy failures and technocratic mismanagement to the lived experiences of those at the periphery: non-Persian national communities, rural populations, farmers and displaced peoples. Drawing on original narratives and critical analysis, it reveals how water scarcity, mega-dams, interbasin water transfers and unsustainable development intersect with long histories of marginalisation, extractive industries and securitised state responses. Allan Hassaniyan highlights how environmental degradation has become a matter of survival for Iran's subalterns, exposing the deeply political dimensions of Iranian ecology. Bridging environmental studies, political ecology and critical area studies, this timely work fills a significant gap in English-language scholarship, as well as spotlighting the unequal and often devastating consequences of the state's environmental crisis for its most vulnerable communities.