Paradigmatic Analysis of Environmental Management in Iran

Iran has many critical environmental changes and challenges, especially in agricultural development. These challenges are due to land reform and subsequent modernization. The main purpose of this paper is to analyze the paradigmatic trend of agricultural environmental management of Iran. The study was accomplished through reviewing archival research findings as well as analyzing the content in different documents and worldwide databases. To do so, various global paradigmatic perspectives and strategies about the environmental management were reviewed. Moreover, by reviewing different environmental laws, rules, regulations, and activities in Iran, three distinct phases in environmental management including 'enthusiasm for modernization activities (1962- 1974)', 'concerns about environmental issues (1974- 2005)', and 'crisis of environmental management (2005-present)' were revealed. Thus, the most important problems leading to the unsustainable environment in the three phases and the reasons resulting in the failures of macro-policies were addressed. It is possible to declare that inappropriate paradigms within environmental management thinking, i.e., sustainability, as well as inconsistencies between the paradigms and strategies could be traced in different periods. The findings provide the researchers with the fact that the dominant perspective in environmental management is frontier economics via emphasis on economics and fewer considerations over ecological problems. Accordingly, the environmental degradation increased, via which the authorities were not successful to conduct collaborative systematic actions since the evidence represented the mere accomplishment of some sporadic strategies. As the pedagogical implications of the study, it should be asserted that a basic paradigm shift in environmental activities from technocentrism to ecocentrism seems to be necessary to achieve sustainable agriculture.