Abstract
Economic sanctions have been actively used against Iran in the last four decades. In response to sanctions, Iran has adopted a range of survivalist policies with notable environmental implications. This study provides the first extensive overview of the unintended environmental impacts of international economic sanctions on Iran. It is argued that while sanctions are certainly not the root cause of Iran’s major environmental problems, they have had an undeniable impact on Iran’s environment by: (1) restricting its access to technology, service, and know-how; (2) blocking international environmental aid; and (3) increasing the natural resource-intensity of its economy. Sanctions have effectively limited Iran’s economic growth and its ability to decouple its economy from natural resources, thereby growing the role of natural resources in Iran’s political economy. Overall, sanctions have made economic production much costlier to its environment, which is not currently considered a priority in the policy agenda of the Iranian leaders who manage the country in survival mode while aggressively pursuing their ideology. The study calls for increased attention to the overlooked environmental impacts of sanctions on Iran with major health, justice, and human rights implications that could be transgenerational and transboundary.
Highlights
With the presumed ability to normalize behavior and remove threats, international economic sanctions have been in use for decades
Sanctions have effectively limited Iran’s economic growth and its ability to decouple its economy from natural resources, thereby growing the role of natural resources in Iran’s political economy
The main objective of this study is to provide the first overview of the collateral environmental harms of the international economic sanctions imposed on Iran
Summary
With the presumed ability to normalize behavior and remove threats, international economic sanctions have been in use for decades. The degeneration of human rights and the emergence of food and health insecurity problems as the result of sanctions are among the frequently used humanitarian grounds to criticize the legitimacy and effectiveness of sanctions [7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16] The environment is another sector that could be impacted by economic sanctions [1,17,18,19,20,21,22]. The Islamic Republic of Iran (hereafter, Iran) has been the target of major international economic sanctions by the United States, United Nations (UN), and European Union (EU) over the past four decades [23,24] Whether these sanctions have achieved their objectives and whether they have been successful in changing Iran’s behavior by impacting its economy have been the subject of controversial debates. These claims have not been verified and knowledge on the possible impacts of economics sanctions on Iran’s environment [17,20,44,45] is highly restricted
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