Water Cooperation and Ideology in Local Communities

Abstract

This article addresses how ideology affects local water governance, focusing on a groundwater basin in central Iran. It offers a case study of a symbiotic relationship between upstream and downstream communities, allowing a sustainable form of water governance. The cooler weather, better pastures and greater amount of precipitation of the basin upstream drew nomadic communities, whose economy was not dependent on irrigation. Downstream, fertile soil and warm weather favored agriculture with a high demand for water that was supplied by the groundwater transferred from the basin upstream. The exchange of livestock products and agricultural goods between the basin’s upstream and downstream areas systematically tied their economic systems. However, Iran’s 1979 revolution brought a hybrid leftist-Islamist ideology that unbalanced this traditional relationship through the reorganization of geographical space. The upstream communities were encouraged to cultivate their pastures, which led to a boom in the number of irrigation wells. The downstream villages were persuaded to adopt a new cropping pattern that turned most of their water-efficient vineyards into apricot orchards with high water demands. Therefore, an abrupt increase in water demand in the basin upstream and downstream thwarted the cooperation between the two areas and drove the basin into “the tragedy of the unmanaged commons.”