Authors
1
Master's Graduate in Political Geography, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran.
2
Political Geography, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran
3
Climatology, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran
4
PhD in Watershed Science and Engineering, University of Hormozgan, Bandar Abbas, Iran
Abstract
Changes and reductions in water resources can have numerous and extensive security consequences. A study of the water resources of the Mashhad metropolis in accordance with the semi-arid climatic conditions shows that the influence of various factors such as population growth, pilgrimage, and dependence on water resources across the border (dam-friendly), the water resources show a decreasing trend, which has various and extensive security consequences for the Mashhad metropolis. The present study, which was conducted with a descriptive and analytical method and using library and field data (questionnaire), aims to identify the most important security consequences in the form of three dimensions of political, economic, and environmental consequences resulting from the reduction of water resources in the Mashhad metropolis. The results indicate that 31 security consequences resulting from the reduction of water resources in the Mashhad metropolis have been confirmed. The most important of these consequences in different dimensions are as follows: the environmental dimension of land subsidence, increased dust, ecosystem destruction, lowering of groundwater resources, and change in land use; the economic dimension of increasing water infrastructure costs, increasing disease and treatment costs, reducing production and increasing commodity prices, reducing income from the tourism industry, increasing prices of basic goods, and the political dimension of water tensions with neighbors, border disputes, the formation of tensions and creating political instability and instability, reducing the national power of the government, and increasing instability.
Keywords
Subjects
Political Organizing of Space