An Analysis of Environmental Discourse of the Iranian Socio-economic Development Plan

Today, addressing environmental issues as well as planning for environmental protection for creating a suitable environment for human life, has become one of the main concerns of governments around the world. This resulted in confronting and problem solving environmental policy issues to site on the agenda of governments. The Islamic Republic of Iran has considered the environmental issues in the form of Five-Year Programs for Economic, Social and Cultural Development plans. The main questions of this study are as follows: A. what is the place of environment in strategic national development plans of the Islamic Republic of Iran? B. What kind of environmental discourse has dominated on the five-year development programs? This study has utilized documentary method. The results of the study show that the first and third Development Program were affected by discourse of environmentalism and in the fourth and fifth ones, development discourse of ecosystem were dominant. The result also indicates that environmental justice was not considered in the Five-Year Economic Development Plans. The paper ended up with the suggestion that regarding ecosystem discourse as well as environmental justice, there is a critical need for setting up National Environmental Policy.