Contextualizing the Iranian Environmental Movement

Scholarship on environmentalism of the South has hitherto paid scant attention to Southern environmentalism that is not focused on material concerns or immediate livelihood issues of the poor. This paper introduces the case of environmentalism in Iran, as an example of progressive environmental politics of the middle classes which is not directly concerned with material concerns. It traces the emergence of the environmental movement in Iran to the launch of a nationwide reform movement which began in the 1990s and facilitated civil society mobilizations. Hence, the paper contextualizes the environmental movement with reference to the previous Iranian social movements and their actors. It argues that the emergence and evolution of the environmental movement in Iran should be understood as a particular response to a particular state-society relation and with reference to the specific socio-political context of Iran after the revolution of 1979.