Masoud Yazdanpanah - phd student at shiraz university
Michael Thompson - International Institute for Applied Systems AnalysisSchlossplatz ۱. Laxenburg, Austria
Dariush Hayati - Assistant Professor, Department of Agricultural Extension and Education, Faculty of Agriculture, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran

Most of Iran's surface area has always lain within what is now termed a semi-arid region. Recently Iran has been facing a water crisis so severe has resulted in much of Iran's land ceasing to be productive and which it seemed unable to cope, in spite of water shortages being a familiar historical reality. It seems that something has been lost by its abandoning of traditional practices for modern ones. A wide range of solutions have been developed and implemented to manage such crises, but to date no conceptual framework has been found to guide the realization of these often conflicting objectives. This paper presents clumsy solution, analyzing the challenges of providing a conceptual framework for sustainable water management. For this reason we describe a brief history of water management in Iran. Our argument will be that the pre-modern centuries were characterised by governance whilst the modern has been characterised by government. Governance is more plural and more two-way along all the relationships comprising that plurality, than is government. Modernity, in consequence, lacks the requisite variety, and it is that needs to be restored. We are not advocating a return to how things were, technologically and socially, in the Middle Ages. Rather, we will need to draw on neo-Durkheimian social theory. It provides us with a set of hypotheses about the particular patterns of social relations that, in instituting shared voluntary restraint, give rise to plenitude and keep scarcity at bay.

Traditional water management, Governance, Qanats, Iran