Identification and Analysis of the Barriers to Farmers' Participation in the Revitalization of Lake Urmia Mahabad Sub-Basin

Abstract

Protecting and revitalizing wetlands and other water areas requires the participation of all stakeholders, especially water exploiters and local communities. Based on this fact, the present descriptive-analytical research was conducted with the aim of identifying and analyzing the barriers to farmers' participation in the revitalization of Lake Urmia. The statistical population of the research consisted of 7100 farmers in the Mahabad sub-basin (one of the sub-basins of Lake Urmia); out of them, 364 cases were selected as the sample using random sampling. The data collection tool was a researcher-made questionnaire. The results of the exploratory factor analysis showed that the barriers to the participation of farmers in the revival of Lake Urmia can be categorized in the form of seven factors, including the lack of awareness of organizations regarding the concept of participation, economic barriers and infrastructural weakness, centralized and inappropriate management, political issues and legal weakness, cognitive and educational barriers, weak communication, low social capital, and weak motivation of users. These seven factors could account for 65.9% of the variance in barriers to participation. Furthermore, the results of the prioritization of these factors revealed that economic barriers and infrastructure weakness, political issues and legal weakness, and lack of awareness of organizations regarding the concept of participation were more important in comparison to the other barriers. Thus, it is recommended that any program planning decision-making on the revival of Lake Urmia be aligned with an emphasis on removing these barriers.

Keywords

• protection of wetlands
• stakeholders
• inhibitory factors
• local communities