Challenges and Compromises of Agricultural Water Supply and Environmental Water Right in the Lake Urmia Basin

One of the important issues in our country is the restoration of Lake Urmia and it has been considered by the government since 2008. These efforts and high costs have had none impacts such as allocation of water to the lake on agricultural sector. This study aims to show these effects on the agricultural sector of border provinces. So purposely, in order to evaluate three agricultural water management scenarios a 49-year period of natural surface flows of watershed’s rivers is considered under the various hydrological conditions. The results showed that to provide the lake water demand caused 20 to 25 reduction of agricultural water demand in the West and East Azarbaijan provinces. It is obvious to achieve this, we certainly would have high socio-economic impacts, and recently we experienced changing of crop lands into orchards in the watershed. So, It is recommended that based on international experiences, the committee of restoration of the Lake Urmia provide an accessible framework and novel services for the ecology, otherwise, optimal utilization of credit and time shall not be presented.