Since the late 1990s, Iranian Kurdistan has hosted a wide range of NGOs, engaging in different sociocultural activities. Within this development, establishing environmental associations has been a noteworthy trend, to the extent that almost every city of Iranian Kurdistan has its own environmental society. Even though Kurdish environmental societies have been established according to Iranian law and regulations, conducting environmental activities has been shown to be a risky affair, resulting in imprisonment, assassination and other unpredictable consequences for activists. This paper argues that the Iranian government exercises a securitised approach to environmentalism in the country’s Kurdistan region. This study investigates the factors underlying the securitisation of Kurdish environmentalism.