ABSTRACT

Through an in-depth ethnographic case study, we explore water management practices within the Jiroft County province in Iran and discuss the applicability of indigenous knowledge of regional water management to the resource governance of arid regions across the world. We explore, through qualitative analysis, the relationship between community social structure, indigenous knowledge, water management technologies and practices, and water governance rules under conditions of anthropogenic climate change. From participant observational and interview data (n = 32), we find that historically-dependent community roles establish a social contract for water distribution. Cultural conventions establish linked hierarchies of water ownership, profit-sharing and social responsibility; collectively they construct an equitable system of role-sharing, social benefit distribution, socio-ecological resilience and adaptive capacity in the face of climate change-induced drought. We conclude that the combination of hierarchical land ownership-based water distribution and what we term ‘bilateral compensatory mutual assistance’ for the lowest-profit agricultural water users, provides a model of spontaneous common pool resource management that bolsters community drought resilience. We use this case to proffer recommendations for adapting other centralized, grey infrastructure and regulatory models of water management from lessons learned from this spontaneous adaptive management case.

摘要

通过深入的人种学案例研究，我们探索了伊朗吉罗夫特县内的水管理实践，并讨论了区域水管理的本地知识在世界干旱地区的资源治理中的适用性。通过定性分析，我们探索了人为气候变化条件下社区社会结构，土著知识，水管理技术和实践以及水治理规则之间的关系。来自参与者的观察和访谈数据（n= 32），我们发现历史依赖的社区角色为水分配建立了社会契约。文化习俗建立了水的所有权，利益分享和社会责任的联系层次；面对气候变化导致的干旱，他们共同构建了一个公平的角色共享，社会利益分配，社会生态适应力和适应能力的系统。我们得出的结论是，基于土地所有权的分层供水和我们为最低利润的农业用水者所称的“双边补偿性互助”相结合，提供了一种自发的公共池资源管理模型，可以增强社区的干旱适应能力。我们使用这种情况来提供建议，以适应其他集中式，