Investigating Water Governance Performance in the Zayandeh-Rud Sub-basins: The Comparative Analysis of Isfahan and Chaharmahal va Bakhtiari sub-basins

Recently, water governance has become important due to the increasing complexities associated with water management. So that it is widely acknowledged that the world water crisis is more a crisis of governance than of water scarcity. In recent decades adopting the ‘Water Independence of Provinces’ law has created many social, environmental, economic and managerial crises in the Zayandeh-Rud basin and its two sub-basins (Isfahan and Chaharmahal va Bakhtiari) which have resulted in conflicts between the sub-basin stakeholders. The current applied study was qualitative regarding its methodology and followed a case study approach. The statistical population of the study included managers and senior experts of water governance in two sub-basins (Isfahan and Chaharmahal va Bakhtiari) and finally nine managers and experts in Isfahan sub-basin, four cases in extra-basin level, and six cases in Chaharmahal va Bakhtiari sub-basin were selected as the sample population by means of snowball sampling method till theoretical saturation. Data collection was done by structured questionnaire and interview protocol. Using fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), the empirical analysis of water governance systems in two sub-basins showed that a set of factors associated with low performance regarding climate change adaptation. Regarding performance aspect, water governance in Zayandeh-Rud basin and its two sub-basins were Centralized Rent-seeking and Centralized Coordinated, respectively. This means that both basin and sub-basins have low performance regarding climate change adaptation and ability to resilience and adaptation challenges. The reason for the difference in the type of water governance performance at the level of the Zayandeh-Rud basin and its sub-basins was the poor coordination between water related organizations in sub-basins.