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Assessment of non-monetary facilities in Urmia Lake basin under PES scheme: a rehabilitation solution for the dry lake in Iran

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Abstract

The decline in Urmia Lake basin’s water resources has resulted in a severe drought of the lake. The drought of this hyper-saline lake has put lives of 6.4 million inhabitants at risk. This study was conducted to assess the technical and economic employability of a payment for ecosystem services (PES) method as a policy tool to improve water resources management of Siminehroud river basin which is the most important tributary of Urmia Lake basin. For this purpose, the target areas were identified after the development of a land-use map for the basin. Then, by recruiting the integrated interview method and distributing 398 questionnaires, the required data were collected to assess the employability of the proposed PES method. Among various PES schemes, two methods including a) payment for shifting irrigation methods and b) payment to change cropping patterns in the frame of “Willingness to Accept” (WTA) were proposed to farmers. The results suggest that farmers highly welcomed both proposed methods. The benefit–cost ratio (BCR) for the change in irrigation system was 3.98, whereas the changes for the cropping pattern were 0.8 (for rapeseed), 0.72 (for soybean), and 1.09 (for safflower). As a result, shifting irrigation methods and changing cultivation patterns to safflower are both economically justifiable.

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Notes

  1. The rights to exploit river water in many parts of Iran follow customary laws among local communities. According to this, the villagers divide the water based on their share of land.

  2. The water exploitation of the river is carried out by the water pump, which requires the license of water departments.

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Funding

This study is a part of Alireza Daneshi’s thesis, which was funded by Tarbiat Modares University (TMU), especially for completing the questionnaire.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Gorgan University of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources, Gorgan, Iran

    Alireza Daneshi

  2. Faculty of Natural Resources and Environment, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran

    Mostafa Panahi

  3. Department of Water Security and International Development, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK

    Saber Masoomi

  4. Faculty of Natural Resources, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran

    Mehdi Vafakhah

  5. Department of Geography, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Hossein Azadi

  6. Research Group Climate Change and Security, Institute of Geography, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

    Hossein Azadi & Muhammad Mobeen

  7. Faculty of Environmental Sciences, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Prague, Czech Republic

    Hossein Azadi

  8. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Sargodha, Punjab, Pakistan

    Muhammad Mobeen

  9. Faculty of Economics, Administrative and Social Sciences, Istinye University, Istanbul, Turkey

    Pinar Gökcin Ozuyar

  10. Faculty of Agricultural Sciences and Food of Ss., Cyril Methodius University, Skopje, North Macedonia

    Vjekoslav Tanaskovik

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  1. Alireza Daneshi
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Correspondence to Hossein Azadi.

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Daneshi, A., Panahi, M., Masoomi, S. et al. Assessment of non-monetary facilities in Urmia Lake basin under PES scheme: a rehabilitation solution for the dry lake in Iran. Environ Dev Sustain 23, 10141–10172 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-020-01051-y

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