An appraisal of Iran’s Water Shortage Adaptation Act

Governing the risks of extreme events is of importance to advance climate change adaptation. In March 2018, some seventeen years after the beginning of Iran’s devastating drought, the Council of Ministers enacted the Act on Water Shortage Adaptation. The purpose of the act is to balance consumption of the limited resources for apportioning the shortage to the users, equitably. What this article does not critique is the act’s approach to moving from confronting-with-drought to living-with-drought practice. What will be questioned is the approach to act implementation. While the paper review the act’s main articles, it will address the overlooked factors that need to be considers in the implementation phase. It is shown that the most important scientific principle in the common-pool resources’ legislation is to understand the social and behavioral processes that govern the resources. For example, what is the resolution mechanisms if people go rivalry and fall into conflicts? This is exactly what is missing in the act.