Groundwater governance and implementing the conservation policy: the case study of Rafsanjan Plain in Iran
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Groundwater governance and implementing the conservation policy: the case study of Rafsanjan Plain in Iran S. Jalal Mirnezami1,2 · Cheryl de Boer3 · Ali Bagheri4 Received: 10 July 2018 / Accepted: 9 October 2019 © Springer Nature B.V. 2019
Abstract The groundwater system in the Rafsanjan aquifer perpetuated sustainably for decades before 1950s; however, its groundwater resources have been overexploited in the recent decades. In this paper, we aim to investigate the water governance system to understand the reasons behind the ongoing overexploitation. Sustainability processes are considered a policy implementation problematic. As such, we employ the contextual interaction theory as a policy implementation framework to assess the groundwater governance as part of the context for the conservation policy. Data for this qualitative research were gathered from legal texts, articles, technical reports, and multiple interviews with authorities and groundwater users. The assessment results revealed that the poor quality of the governance system is central to the ineffectiveness of the conservation policies. Findings of this paper can be relied on to devise tools to underpin an appropriate context to sustain groundwater resources. Keywords Governance · Groundwater · Conservation policy · Rafsanjan aquifer · Contextual interaction theory · Policy implementation
1 Introduction The historical profile of conservation in most groundwater-dependent regions around the world reveals that conservation is an objective which has been mostly advocated from the state side, to ensure the sustainability of the nation in the long run (Giordano and Villholth * Ali Bagheri [email protected] S. Jalal Mirnezami [email protected] Cheryl de Boer [email protected] 1
Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran
2
Sharif Policy Research Institute (SPRI), Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
3
Department of Urban and Regional Planning and Geo‑information Management (ITC‑PGM), University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands
4
Department of Water Resources Engineering, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran
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2007). However, this objective has proven to be a difficult task and hardly ever reached (Famiglietti 2014). Iran is among the most extreme of groundwater users (Giordano 2009), and constant drawdown of groundwater levels is a typical issue in most aquifers all over the country (Madani 2014). The state has the responsibility to observe and control the groundwater resources, and during the last century, different organizations, laws, and instruments have been devised in this regard. However, drawdown of the groundwater level highlights the ineffectiveness of all the efforts. The systemic failure of conservation efforts all around the country indicates deeply rooted causes, and it suggests broadening the view from operational issues to the structural aspects of management, or better to say, the water governance. Therefore, the aim of this paper was to assess the
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