Over the past decades, Lake Urmia, the most important water body in northwestern Iran, has played a role far beyond that of a local ecosystem, becoming deeply intertwined with regional livelihoods, habitability, environmental equilibrium, and social stability. The severe decline in its water level has generated multifaceted ecological, socio-economic, and governance-related consequences, turning the lake into one of the central challenges of water governance in Iran. This qualitative study aims to analyze the drivers of Lake Urmia’s desiccation. Using purposive sampling, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 31 experts in water governance, hydropolitics, hydrology, public policy, and natural resource management. The collected data were analyzed through thematic analysis. The findings led to the identification of 153 basic themes, 17 organizing themes, and 5 global themes, reflecting a wide range of interrelated drivers contributing to the lake’s desiccation. The identified global themes are: Hydropolitical Challenges and Infrastructure-Oriented Developmental Paradigm; Water Propaganda and Politicization of Allocation; Governance Fragmentation; Legal and Regulatory Gaps; and Hydro-Climatic Challenges and Physical Transformations. Overall, the findings indicate that the desiccation of Lake Urmia is not merely the outcome of climatic variability, but rather the result of the synergistic interaction of human, institutional, political, legal, and hydro-climatic factors within a fragmented water governance system.
Introduction
Lake Urmia, the most significant water body in northwestern Iran, has long played a role far beyond that of a local ecosystem. Over recent decades, it has been deeply intertwined with regional livelihoods, habitability, environmental balance, and socio-economic stability. The severe decline in its water level and its gradual desiccation have not only generated ecological degradation but have also produced far-reaching social, economic, health-related, and security implications. As a result, Lake Urmia has become one of the central arenas of water governance challenges in Iran. Thus, the Lake Urmia crisis offers an analytical lens for understanding the interconnections among environmental resilience, development trajectories, territorial governance, and public policy in Iran.
The central issue addressed in this study is how diverse natural, institutional, socio-economic, and human-induced drivers have interacted synergistically to reproduce the crisis at the sub-national scale. Identifying these drivers deepens understanding of the structural and functional constraints of water governance and provides an evidence-based foundation for policy interventions aimed at strengthening institutional coherence, improving cross-sectoral coordination, protecting wetlands, mitigating human-induced desertification, and reducing the risks of climate-induced migration.
Material and Methods
This applied qualitative study adopts an inductive approach to investigate the drivers of Lake Urmia’s desiccation within the broader socio-ecological context of Iran. Data were collected through purposive sampling and semi-structured interviews with experts and specialists in the fields of water governance, hydropolitics, hydrology, public policy, and natural resource management.
Interviews continued until theoretical saturation was achieved. Although data adequacy was reached in the twenty-sixth interview, data collection continued up to the thirty-first participant to enhance credibility and capture the hidden dimensions of this complex issue. Ultimately, 31 experts participated in the study.
The qualitative data obtained from the interviews were analyzed using thematic analysis, with the assistance of MAXQDA software. Following Attride-Stirling’s thematic network approach, the analysis began with open coding to identify basic themes. These initial codes were then interpreted and grouped into organizing themes through continuous semantic comparison. Finally, through higher levels of conceptual abstraction and secondary interpretive analysis, 5 global themes were extracted. To enhance the trustworthiness of the findings, Guba and Lincoln’s criteria, namely credibility, confirmability, dependability, and transferability, were considered.
Results and Discussion
The thematic analysis led to the identification of 153 basic themes, 17 organizing themes, and 5 global themes, reflecting a wide range of drivers contributing to the desiccation of Lake Urmia. The identified global themes are as follows:

Hydropolitical Challenges and Infrastructure-Oriented Developmental Paradigm

The crisis is deeply rooted in an infrastructure-oriented developmental paradigm characterized by excessive reliance on engineering-centered interventions, such as extensive dam construction and inter-basin water transfers. These supply-side interventions, often implemented without considering the basin’s ecological capacity, marginalized environmental water rights in favor of technical manipulation of nature. This unsustainable trajectory was further reinforced by the political economy of water, rent-seeking in transfer projects, and institutional conflicts of interest.

Water Propaganda and Politicization of Allocation

Decisions regarding water allocation have frequently been shaped by political pressures, electoral promises, and symbolic development narratives rather than scientific and hydrological principles. Using water projects as tools for political legitimacy has weakened technical decision-making, created unrealistic public expectations, and intensified stakeholder competition for limited resources.

Governance Fragmentation

Fragmented institutional responsibilities, sectoral approaches, and conflicting mandates have systematically prevented integrated water resources management. This fragmentation produces a significant gap between policy formulation and implementation. Restoration plans are consistently hindered by bureaucratic rigidity, weak monitoring capacity, and the notable absence of a unified, authoritative basin-level governance structure.

Legal and Regulatory Gaps

Deficiencies in legal frameworks governing water ownership, allocation, and exploitation have exacerbated the crisis. The absence of enforceable guarantees for Lake Urmia’s environmental water rights leaves it vulnerable to agricultural and industrial demands. Ineffective monitoring of withdrawals, unchecked proliferation of illegal wells, and unauthorized land-use changes highlight the urgent need for robust legal reform and regulatory enforcement.

Hydro-Climatic Challenges and Physical Transformations

While climate variability and drought episodes have contributed to environmental stress, hydro-climatic factors alone cannot explain the crisis’s scale. Extensive physical transformations—including agricultural expansion, groundwater depletion, disruption of hydrological connectivity, and encroachment into ecological buffer zones—have severely weakened the socio-ecological resilience of the basin.
Overall, the findings indicate that the Lake Urmia crisis emerges from the continuous and synergistic interaction of these natural, institutional, socio-economic, and political drivers, which collectively accelerate desiccation and undermine the basin’s socio-ecological resilience.
Conclusion
This study demonstrates that the desiccation of Lake Urmia is a direct consequence of structural deficiencies in water governance, rather than merely a climatic phenomenon. The crisis reflects the failure of fragmented, engineering-centered, and politically driven approaches to address the complexity of a socio-ecological system. Protecting Iran’s wetlands, preventing irreversible soil salinization and land degradation, mitigating human-induced desertification, reducing climate-induced migration, and safeguarding regional habitability require a fundamental reconsideration of prevailing governance paradigms.
Crucially, overcoming the crisis necessitates transitioning from structural and supply-oriented water management toward participatory, adaptive, and network-based water governance. Addressing legal gaps, ensuring transparency in resource allocation based on scientific indicators, strengthening cross-sectoral coordination, and recognizing the environmental water right of Lake Urmia as a binding priority are essential pillars of effective territorial governance. Policymakers should acknowledge the complexity of socio-ecological systems and move beyond temporary, symbolic, or purely engineering-based solutions.
Policy-wise, restoring Lake Urmia requires simultaneous action across the five identified dimensions. This entails shifting from supply-side water management to demand management, halting the expansion of new hydraulic infrastructures, revising dam operation policies, ensuring the release of environmental water rights, establishing transparent water allocation systems, sealing illegal wells, regulating licensed withdrawals, and disclosing allocation data to the public.
Institutionally and legally, establishing a single authoritative basin-level governance body, supported by local water management councils and stakeholder participation, is essential for overcoming fragmentation and strengthening social accountability. Revising legal frameworks governing water ownership, allocation, exploitation, and land-use change, together with GIS-based and smart monitoring systems, can enhance regulatory enforcement. Climate adaptation measures, including crop pattern reform, reduction of water-intensive cultivation, restoration of hydrological connectivity, protection of ecological buffer zones, wastewater reuse, and rehabilitation of conveyance canals, are also necessary for rebuilding socio-ecological resilience.
Sustainable restoration of Lake Urmia therefore requires a decisive shift from fragmented, short-term, and infrastructure-centered approaches toward integrated, knowledge-based, participatory, and adaptive water governance. Only within such a framework can crisis reproduction be prevented and the conditions for ecological resilience, sustainable development, and territorial stability be restored.