Adaptive capacity of Urmia Lake Restoration National Committee

According to different indexes Iran is facing with the water crisis. The climate has been changed and the previous methods and approaches are no longer sufficient to deal with Iran's wicked water problem. Solving the water crisis requires adopting with new climate and water resource situations. This paper distinguishes between water scarcity as a climatic phenomenon and a water crisis. Water crisis is the crisis of water governance which is not able to deal effectively with water scarcity. From the governance point of view, there are some institutions, formal or informal, which formulate the water policies and implement them so governance reform can be done through regulating and capacity building of these institutions. This paper with the aim of evaluating the one of formal water institution in Iran would introduce the Adaptive Capacity Wheel Model. The Model has 6 dimensions and 22 criteria for evaluation of the capacity of an institute in dealing with new condition and change. Urmia Lake Restoration National Committee is the case of this study and the result of evaluation show the low capacity of this institute for adoption.