Promoting Quantitative Policy-Making for Providing Environmental Security on The Basis of A Strategic-Sustainable Framework (A Case Study of Lake Urmia Basin)

Based on the scientific literature in the realm of sustainable water resources management, some researchers have highlighted the impacts of economic, social and environmental driving-forces, yet ignored analysis of effective strategic internal and external factors through the basin. Meanwhile, the others have considered strategic factors rather than sustainable development paradigm. Therefore, the current research has constructed a framework to promote the quantitative policy-making by using the internal and external strategic matrix along with the sustainable development together in Lake Urmia Basin. Due to the fact that, conventional quantitative strategic planning matrix (QSPM) could not involve above mentioned considerations simultaneously, the Modified QSPM (MQSPM) was proposed to include the socio-economic and environmental factors besides internal and external factors. According to the results, the most attractive policy belonged to Conservative strategies (included weaknesses and opportunities). Moreover, capability of watershed management to deal with 10 out of 13 weaknesses was not satisfying. The potential of regional watershed management to deal with 11 economic, five social, and nine environmental challenges contributed to the weaknesses was estimated inappropriate. In addition, climate change and drought were not evaluated as the most critical threat of the basin, while economic crises and low investment security was determined as the most critical threat. Actions’ ranking for environmental security conservation indicated that high ranks belonged to the integrated watershed management. Due to the simplicity and suitable performance of MQSPM, this matrix is suggested for future research work on identifying and evaluating the strategic factors.