Is nature purely a scientific concern, to be measured by data and managed by bureaucratic agencies? Or is it something older, an inheritance that links modern Iran to its deeply storied past? Prof. Abe argues that many Iranians experience both phenomena at once. And surprisingly, the material objects that make this dual meaning visible, the things that bring it to life, are not lofty ideas or abstract scientific concepts.

They are animals, flags, landscapes, and everyday physical objects that quietly push people to feel and think in specific ways. This is the story of how Iran’s environmental movement has unfolded through these objects, and how something as simple as a flag or a cheetah can reshape the way people understand their land.

Iran has changed rapidly over the last few decades. The Iran–Iraq war left deep scars, and the urgent economic rebuilding that followed in the 1990s came with a cost: forests shrank, deserts spread, water tables dropped, and air quality plummeted. The word mohit-e zist, meaning “environment”, was not widely used until relatively recently, when the scale of these problems became impossible to ignore.

The government created environmental agencies and NGOs began popping up across the country. Eco-tour companies began offering birdwatching retreats, wildlife tours, treks to ancient villages, and desert expeditions that doubled as environmental education.

In interviews, eco-tour organizers often spoke of the land not merely as soil and rock, but as something uniquely Iranian. One tour manager insisted: “The land is ours, our property, the people’s. It’s unique, and it must be protected.”

These tours didn’t just teach science. They taught a kind of cultural memory. Tourists slept outside rather than in hotels, ate simple meals, visited old villages, and learned about the land as a living part of Iran’s story. This blend of ecological concern and national pride, something Prof. Abe highlights often, forms one of the central threads of Iranian environmental activism.

If one symbol captures the emotional side of Iranian environmentalism, it is the Asiatic cheetah. Once roaming widely across the Middle East, the Asiatic cheetah now survives only in Iran, and only barely. Development projects cracked open their habitats, roads sliced through migration corridors, and the rapid push for economic modernization squeezed the species to the brink of extinction.

When environmental activists speak about the cheetah, their voices reveal a mix of affection, grief, and pride. The cheetah is fast but vulnerable, ancient but endangered. Many Iranians see in it a reflection of their own national story: a civilization that once thrived, but now confronts immense challenges.

NGOs build 3-D exhibits of cheetah habitats at environmental fairs. Young activists distribute pamphlets with the animal’s image printed alongside the Iranian flag. And when the Iranian national football team wore the Asiatic cheetah on their jerseys during the 2014 and 2018 World Cups, millions of Iranians felt a powerful, collective swell of pride.

Nature was not being presented as nature. Nature was being presented in association with Iran. Prof. Satoshi Abe argues that the cheetah has become a “site of memory”, a way people recall the greatness of ancient Iran and express hope for its future. In the hands of activists, the cheetah becomes a story about a nation worth caring for, protecting, and restoring.

If the cheetah represents a living memory of Iran’s past greatness, the national flag often stands as a reminder of its unity and future. During an environmental event in 2015, a tree-planting day, a coordinator hoisted the Iranian flag as he led a group of volunteers through a barren hillside east of Tehran. The flag fluttered above the crowd as he explained how mismanaged dams and declining water sources had degraded the area.

“Iranians once knew how to manage water beautifully,” he told the group, gesturing toward the flag. “We lived by principles that were environmentally friendly.”

The implication was clear: planting a tree was not just an ecological act. It was a patriotic act. A cultural act. A way to restore something deeper than soil moisture.

The flag followed the volunteers everywhere that day, carried at the front of the line, held up at rest stops, placed next to piles of saplings. In the simplest terms, it worked like a stage prop. But more profoundly, the flag served as a material force that shaped participants’ feelings and understandings of the event.

You could say the flag turned planting a sapling into planting a future. Prof. Abe observed that the flag’s power comes not from a single moment, but from its constant presence in everyday life. Drivers pass it on overpasses. Families see it in parks. Children encounter it in schools. Its colors are woven into banners, posters, shop signs, and religious slogans. Over time, this ubiquity gives the flag the power to spark emotion even when no one consciously intends it to, and that emotional spark bleeds into environmental activism.

What emerges from all of this is a distinctly Iranian relationship between nature and nationhood. Environmental problems, water shortages, biodiversity loss, and air pollution, are scientific problems. They require data, research, management plans, regulations, and enforcement. However, for many Iranians, these problems are also cultural and emotional. They resonate with stories of Iran as a cradle of ancient civilization, a land of gardens and mythical landscapes.

When activists link environmental protection to national identity, they form an unusually broad coalition. Retirees, students, parents, city workers, athletes, and religious leaders may all see environmental care as part of being Iranian. This sentiment does not replace scientific environmentalism, but rather adds another layer to it, one grounded in pride, history, and belonging.

Iran continues to grapple with serious environmental challenges. Groundwater levels are declining. The Caspian Sea and Lake Urmia have receded dramatically. Air pollution regularly reaches dangerous levels in major cities. And yet, environmental activism has grown more creative, more emotionally resonant, and more deeply woven into ordinary life.