Developing an Appropriate Organizational Structure for Agricultural Water Demand Management in Iran

Serious attention to agricultural water supply management is inevitable due to an increase in demand for this most precious resource. Water demand management is a strategy that reduces the demand for, increases its use efficiency of, and prevents the waste of its resources. Various laws, pertaining to the prudent water management, have been passed; however, many of them have never been enforced. Therefore, the existing structure was investigated by polling a group of water- related experts. The questionnaire, which was employed for this research, was answered by38 eminent water experts. The calculated Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the polling was 0.701 that pointed to the strong reliability of the questionnaire. Those water experts were in agreement with reorganization of the water resources management and maintained that a “lack of coordination among relevant agencies” and the “legal difficulties in reforming the consumption patterns” have greatly affected the emergence of the existing water crisis. Therefore, a countrywide organizational chart, consisting of five levels, was proposed: 1. Providing a framework and adapting a firm policy on logical water management in coordination with the judiciary bodies; 2. Enabling the managers of large watersheds to adapt their own policies; 3. Enabling the managers of sub-watersheds to adapt their own policies; 4. Implementing the confirmed policies employing the existing hardware and software and looking for the new methods; 5. Implementing the adapted policies at the local scale. We strongly recommend an assessment of this chart by the concerned water authorities.