Linking Water Scarcity to Mental Health: Hydro–Social Interruptions in the Lake Urmia Basin, Iran

Maja Ženko,Filippo Menga

doi:10.3390/w11051092

Abstract

Alterations of water flows resulting from the manifestation of powerful hydro–social imaginaries often produce an uneven distribution of burdens and benefits for different social groups or regions, reflecting their social and political power. Marginalized regions can suffer manufactured territorialized water scarcity, which disturbs the natural, economic and socio-political order of water users, and as this article shows, inevitably affects their psychological wellbeing. Set in the context of the surroundings of Lake Urmia in Iran, once one of the largest hypersaline lakes in the world and now a severely degraded ecosystem mainly as a result of water overuse in its watershed, this article explores how and through which pathways this manufactured water scarcity impacted the mental health of the water users in the region. The research findings reveal that alterations in this local hydro–social territory and the resulting biophysical, financial and social changes, as well as impacts on physical health of water users, relate to chronic psychological stress, social isolation, intra-community conflicts, despair, hopelessness, depression and anxiety.

Highlights

Freshwater scarcity is becoming one of the leading global environmental issues of the 21st century [1,2,3,4].The latest World Water Development Report released by the United Nations World Water AssessmentProgramme revolves around a straightforward correlation: our booming global population puts a strain on global food and electricity production, which are both water-intensive
We argue that manufactured water scarcity can lead to mental health impacts for the marginalized water users with additional psychological stress being caused by governmentalization and increased state regulation of the irrigation infrastructure, which creates exclusion and further marginalization of a certain part of the population who depend on illegal appropriation of water resources
In this article we argue that another mechanism impacting water users’ mental health through the changes in community relations is the governmentalization of contested hydro–social territories

Summary

Introduction

Freshwater scarcity is becoming one of the leading global environmental issues of the 21st century [1,2,3,4].The latest World Water Development Report released by the United Nations World Water AssessmentProgramme revolves around a straightforward correlation: our booming global population ( in low- and middle-income countries) puts a strain on global food and electricity production, which are both water-intensive. Global water use is set to exponentially grow, making water increasingly scarce, and, according to the report, nature-based solutions are required to address these pressing challenges [5] While this argument is formally correct, it foregrounds an ontology of water primarily informed by the natural sciences and technical assumptions about ecological scarcity, one that can downplay the social and political choreographies of power that are key in defining water use, allocation and access [6]. Alterations of water flows result in the redistribution of burdens and benefits for different groups of people and impact the livelihoods of affected communities, including their social and political order, their economy, culture and health [16,17] This large and growing post-humanist body of literature has advanced the notion of the hydro–social cycle to denote the ways in which the materiality of

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Conclusion