Iran’s Environmental Challenges and Movements on the Margins

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.