National Transfer Lands Project Aimed at Developing or Conduit for Land Grabbing in Northern Iran (Case Study: Department of Natural Resources and Watershed Area Sari,Mazandaran)

Natural resources general organization of Mazandaran Province on the strength of rehabilitation & transfer law (approved in 1980 and its executive regulations due to 31 & 32 issues) have transferred national lands to some persons and legal sectors in order to unemployment, poverty and Natural resources degradation reduction and also socioeconomic condition improvement by industrial and agricultural activities in rural communities. Now, after 3 decades of approval and execution of transfer process, we decided to analyze socio-economic effects and its success level in Mazandaran Province. Among the statistical society in present study including 586 transferred cases from 1993 to 2013, 169 samples were randomly selected by Morgan table and these cases were interviewed directly. Our considered variables include: (a) Natural resources area (b) employment level (c) success & efficiency factors. After collecting and arrangement of field data by questionnaires and analyses them by SPSS18 software, the founding were presented as charts and tables by Chi-square method. The results have show that 4709 hectares of national lands have transferred up to now and 56% of this process were allocated to agricultural activities and we finally found that the execution of transfer process have no worthy influence to its targets.