Determining the Hydropolitical Impact of Kora-Aras Basin Countries on Iran's Environmental Security Based on the Mactor Method

Regarding the population growth, industry expansion, rising public health and welfare, per capita renewable water resources are declining. Therefore, this commodity, like other economic commodities, is subject to scarcity. The scarcity and unreasonable use of water resources has created serious and significant problems for sustainable development and environmental protection. Lack of water resources poses a serious threat to human health, food security, industrial development and ecological systems. Because water issues are intertwined with the national history and identity of societies and are also part of the national security of governments; Therefore, strategic confrontation with water relations and conflicts will be an intertwined issue for policymakers in this field. Hence, the political, economic, and environmental actors and actors of the Kura-Aras River Basin in the South Caucasus are numerous and diverse on a regional and global scale. The main use of Kura-Aras water is in agricultural Georgia and in Armenia in agriculture-industry and in the Republic of Azerbaijan it is the primary source for drinking water supply; However, this basin is uncontrollably polluted. Due to the lack of monitoring of urban and industrial wastewater, agricultural recurrent flows and widespread use of pesticides, especially in the Republic of Azerbaijan and oil-related industries, metal extraction and smelting in Georgia and Armenia, the natural mechanism of this basin is facing serious challenges.

Actor analysis or stakeholder analysis is the process by which individuals or groups are identified that have the greatest influence on an issue, issue, activity, strategy, or decision. Various methods of actor analysis are widely used in management, policy-making, marketing and futures research. Actor analysis is widely used in environmental management because the issues in this field are very complex and require the involvement of different individuals, groups and organizations. Accordingly, the word actor or beneficiary is used to refer to each of these different beings. The second goal is to identify the position of each actor in relation to goals, priorities or key issues, and to achieve this goal, a two-part matrix is used. Actor analysis using this method consists of 5 interconnected and related steps: defining actors and their main strategies or goals. When using the module methods, the initial inputs required for the analysis must be provided separately. Therefore, defining the main issues and topics (structural analysis), although it is one of the activities that is done in a complete futures research project in the previous stages, but when using the module, this stage is also added to the research stages. It can also be pointed out that the identification of actors (goals, motives, limitations and tools of their action) as well as the identification of the main strategies and goals of each actor can be considered as two separate stages, but because these two stages actually include gathering two sets of data and forming elements of two separate matrices, in this paper, these two activities are considered in one step.

Experts participating in the panel of experts in this study completed interaction matrices in two stages. In strategic foresight, it is more important than identifying future variables to identify the relationships between them; Because in the real world, these variables affect each other and none of them can be analyzed independently. Identifying interactions paves the way for the use of networked and systemic approaches, including the parsing method. To identify the interactions, experts need to know how to fill in the matrix elements and the meaning of each of the positive and negative numbers. This issue was identified by the researchers as a facilitator for experts, and finally the one-part matrix of actor-actor and the two-part matrix of actor-goal were completed. First, the interaction matrix was scored among the actors, which is an indicator of the relative power or influence of the actors on each other. Interactions between actors are asymptomatic matrices (positive or negative) that determine the intensity of the effect of row elements on columnar elements. of the actors on each other is also obtained. Also in the second stage is the actor-target matrix (tasks).In terms of hydropolitical relations between the countries of Kura-Aras catchment, Turkey, Armenia and Georgia had the most influence in this basin, and among them, Turkey had the most influence and Georgia had the least influence, and Iran and Azerbaijan had very high influence and very low influence. Countries upstream of the Kora-Aras catchment. It is important to note that the role of these two actors in the future of the Kora-Aras catchment area is considered to be very important, considering that Turkey and Armenia are simultaneously highly influential and influential. Assessing the power of actors among the actors shows that Turkey and Armenia are the most influential countries in the Aras-Kora catchment area and Iran and Azerbaijan are the most influential countries.

The crisis of water scarcity and its increasing consequences due to increasing consumption, has caused water to play a more fundamental role in directing the socio-political relations of political-spatial units and human structures, especially in arid regions of the world. In such a way that today the issue of water has affected the security and relations of political-space units. A trend that will be more widespread in the countries located in the desert strip of the world with a view to change the pattern of precipitation and reducing rainfall and increasing water consumption in the future. The reflection of the current situation in many common watersheds has led to changes in the hydropolitical relations of political-space units and has strengthened the confrontational and hydro-hegemonic approaches of political-space units. The habitat of this catchment area of Turkey and Armenia has been through improper dam construction, dumping of sewage from power plants and industrial factories, and among these, the Islamic Republic of Iran has the highest environmental impact (human and natural) and the role of Turkey. And Armenia as the main players in the future have the Kora-Aras catchment.