Assessment of Traditional Groundwater Governance Features UsingEffective Groundwater Governance

Abstract

In arid and semi-arid areas, water shortage leads people to the creation of traditional water management appropriate to local characteristics. Iran is one of the oldest civilizations of the world that has a unique water supply system according to social, cultural and climate condition. Indigenous knowledge-based management systems were replaced with modern management systems, and due to non-compliance modern technologies with social and environmental conditions of region, many problems have been created. The purpose of this paper was to combine traditional and modern governance rules for development of groundwater governance framework in order to achieve sustainable development. In fact, the use of culture and indigenous knowledge in the field of water resources management and retrieval new issues from new theories of governance can be the missing piece of groundwater management.In this research, the comparison of scientific documents and field observation were used to extract indigenous knowledge of sustainable groundwater governance from aqueducts management. For this purpose, at first we introduced modern system in water governance and then compared common factors with traditional governance to provide a groundwater governance framework adapted to arid and semi-arid regions. Finally, the gaps of traditional governance can be covered by combining with the principles of effective governance and then a management system adapted to climate condition.Dealing effectively with the challenges of the present era and providing appropriate development patterns will be achieved by combining indigenous knowledge with modern management.

Keywords

• groundwater management
• indigenous knowledge
• traditional governance
• groundwater governance
• sustainable development