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省内的水资源管理实践，并讨论了区域水资源管理的本土知识对世界各地干旱地区资源治理的适用性。我们通过定性分析探讨了人为气候变化条件下社区社会结构、土著知识、水资源管理技术和实践以及水资源治理规则之间的关系。来自参与者观察和访谈数据 ( n= 32)，我们发现历史上依赖的社区角色为水分配建立了社会契约。文化公约建立了水资源所有权、利润分享和社会责任的关联等级；他们共同构建了一个公平的角色分担、社会利益分配、社会生态复原力和面对气候变化引起的干旱的适应能力系统。我们得出的结论是，将基于土地所有权的分层水资源分配与我们对利润最低的农业用水者称为“双边补偿互助”的结合，提供了一种自发的公共池资源管理模型，可增强社区抗旱能力。我们使用这个案例来提供适应其他集中式、