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, socioecological 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.
Growing conditions of water scarcity and population growth necessitate measures for improved water availability to meet agricultural, industrial, and domestic and consumer water demands; generating new environmental pressures on wetlands and other aquatic ecosystems. In Iran, the "set-aside program" incentivizes farmer participation in wetland conservation through mandated land management practices, making them key stakeholders in environmental conservation action. This study explores attitudes to participation in the set-aside wetland conservation program to revive the Jazmurian wetland in Iran, using a random sample of 226 farmer-stakeholder respondents. Farmers were surveyed to investigate economic and social participation using a willingness to accept (WTA) and willingness to pay (in money per ha) (WTP) model. Results show strong (45%) respondent opposition to wetland conservation participation. On the basis of their WTA, the amount of compensation offered by the villagers was significantly affected by "the cultivated area", "gender", "education", "family size", "residency", "income", "moralism", and "Inverse Mills Ratio index" factors. Also, "the cultivated area", "age", "education", "marital status", "family size", and "income" were found to be significantly affecting their WTP. We argue firstly, that policies to improve wetland conservation must join together infrastructure and agricultural development planning -such that dam projects, agricultural and water conservation planning are better integrated across wetland catchments. Secondly, that wetland conservation participation will be improved through land consolidation agreements for small-holders, and through incomes stabilisation, capacity building, social learning and awareness-raising initiatives for farmers towards sustainable agricultural practices.
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