Assessment of Agricultural and Natural Resources Sustainability in East Azerbaijan Province: Application of Composite Indicators

This study aimed to assess the agricultural and natural resources sustainability of East Azerbaijan Province counties. The research approach was the descriptive-analytical. At first, according to the agricultural and natural resources experts’ viewpoints, 29 indicators were selected in three dimensions: economic, social and environmental issues. Then, the required data and information have been collected from Statistical reports of Agriculture Jihad organization, Statistical yearbooks of East Azerbaijan province and analytical reports of Regional Water organization of East Azerbaijan Province in 2015 and the relative weight of indicators were determined using principal components analysis. The multi-criterion function based on the distance to the ideal point was used to aggregate the several indicators. The results showed that Kaleybar and Varzeghan are the most sustainable and unstable counties respectively. Agricultural land per capita indicator, insurance percentage and yield indicator in economic dimension, literacy rate and immigration in social dimension and the indicators of vegetation cover, chemical fertilizer use and soil organic matter in environmental dimension have the most relative importance. Based on the results, the following recommendations are presented in order to achieve higher levels of agricultural and natural resources sustainability. The arable land per person might be increased through the implementation of appropriate mechanisms that avoid land-use changes and expand the fields of agriculture employment in rural areas, particularly in agro-based industries, to absorb the labor surplus from the agriculture lands. Educational services must be expanded to eradicate illiteracy in rural areas, especially for farmers, and with protection of current vegetation cover in the province, should be tried to improve and extend it.