Environmental Sustainability Analysis of Rural Settlements Case study: Khoramdareh County

Environmental sustainability of rural settlements based on a systematic viewpoint may be defined as a realization of sustainable development in different social, economic and environmental aspects of rural areas. Achieving this goal requires that we pay more attention to effective elements and factors through a set of sustainability indices. This research was meant to analyze sustainable factors of rural settlement in three dimensions: environmental, social and economic context using multi-criteria decision analysis and explanation of the relationships between its active and effective factors in the rural area of the Khorramdarreh County in the province of Zanjan. The research method used is the descriptive analytic approach. Data from 287 households were sampled randomly from a total of 1143 households in the four villages including: Rahmat Abad, Alvand, Baghdareh and, Sukhariz (out of 15 villages) in the Khorramdarreh County. In the process of doing this research and after calculating the weights, the difference in the sustainability of environmental, social, economic and physical aspects in rural areas of this county have been determined. Data was collected using library and field research through questionnaires. Data analysis was performed by the One-Sample t Test and the Vikur and path analysis techniques, using statistical software SPSS. The findings show that environmental sustainability in the study area is half desirable. Among the different aspects of environmental sustainability, the most effective factors are physical, economic, social and environmental aspects, respectively. Little attention of policy-making –system to socio-cultural and environmental aspects, especially in practice, and rapid and unplanned utilization of production resources are the most important factors affecting this situation in two given dimensions. Although, in programmed documents the planning system agents emphasize on the socio-cultural sustainability - especially environmental aspects, they ignore the implementation of approved policies in action. However, the role of villagers without necessary training in rapid utilization of resources should not be neglected.