Warning Over Water Governance Challenges in Lorestan; Emphasis on Reforming Laws

Khorramabad – The seventh session of the Lorestan Governance and Legislation Think Tank, focusing on the province's water issues, was held at Lorestan University.

According to Ambassador Arjan, the 7th meeting of the Lorestan Provincial Governance and Legislation Think Tank, a branch of the Research Center of the Islamic Council, was held in the Shahid Mirbaharsi Hall of Lorestan University.

In this meeting, the review report on water issues in Lorestan province was presented and various aspects of water resources management challenges were discussed and discussed with the presence of think tank members and experts in the fields of water, economy and management.

The main focus of this meeting was to identify the obstacles to effective governance in the water sector and provide solutions to improve the management of water resources, increase coordination between the responsible institutions and sustainable use of the province's water capacities.

The need to transition from crisis management to water risk management

At the beginning of the meeting, Ali Haqizadeh, a member of the province's Governance and Legislation Think Tank and Professor of the Rangeland and Watershed Engineering Department of Lorestan University, explained the state of water resources and the need to review management approaches in this area.

Emphasizing that water should be considered beyond a mere environmental issue and as a vital commodity and a strategic and security issue, he pointed to the dangers of hydrological droughts and floods.

Haqizadeh emphasized the necessity of transitioning from traditional crisis management to risk management and adaptation to climate change and considered it necessary to amend some laws, regulations and regulations related to river boundaries with the aim of reducing flood damage.

The development of artificial groundwater feeding plans, the implementation of flood spreading plans, planning for the construction of a dam in accordance with the capacities and needs of the province, and the use of less attention-grabbing capacities for water-based tourism in Lorestan, were among the other axes raised in his speech.

Governance challenges and institutional inconsistency in water resources management

In the continuation of this meeting, Mehri Saidinia, assistant professor of water science and engineering department of Lorestan University, presented a detailed report of the research "Investigation of water system of Lorestan province from the perspective of water elites of the province".

He explained that this research was conducted with an objective and unbiased approach, relying on official documents and in-depth interviews with three groups of experts, including university professors, executives and leading farmers.

Stating that the province's water issues are not limited to water scarcity, Saidinia attributed some of the challenges in this area to management problems, some policies, laws, and weak coordination among the responsible institutions.

In describing the current situation, he addressed the active dams, plans under implementation and study, pumping stations and irrigation and drainage networks of the province and listed the most important issues identified in the research.

Based on the explanations provided, the weakness in the governance and institutional structures, inconsistency between the institutions, insular approaches, some shortcomings in human power and executive performance, the lack of a comprehensive road map and sufficient executive guarantee for the plans, as well as the weakness of effective planning to deal with drought, are among the challenges of water resources management in Lorestan.

He also mentioned the weakness of water diplomacy at the national level, the problems of resource allocation and financing, technical and infrastructural limitations, some cultural and promotional challenges, and the lack of adequate prioritization for water issues at the provincial level as other obstacles to the sustainable management of water resources.

Monitoring water harvesting and reforming economic mechanisms

In another part of the meeting, Hamid Asayesh, member of the think tank and associate professor of the Department of Economics of Hazrat Ayatollah Boroujerdi University (RA), focusing on the regulatory, legal and economic aspects of water issues in the province, considered the weakness of monitoring and enforcement of laws as one of the important challenges of this field.

He pointed to issues such as insufficient monitoring of water extraction, expansion of unauthorized wells and over extraction, violations of some users, lack of preventive actions and weak monitoring of the stages of design, implementation and evaluation of the results of water projects.

Asayesh also emphasized the connection of water issues with the economic conditions and agricultural structure of the province, the high dependence of employment on the agricultural sector, poverty, increase in the cost of inputs, administrative bureaucracy, the weakness of the mechanism of guaranteed purchase of products and delay in payments as factors affecting the difficulty of managing water resources.

According to him, inflation, lack of definition of a suitable water price mechanism in the industry, uncertainty in private sector investment and weak coordination of the cultivation pattern with neighboring provinces to regulate the market and export development should also be taken into account in water policies.

The need to focus credits on priority projects

In the following, Omid Omid Shahabadi, Deputy Coordinator of Economic Affairs of Lorestan Governorate and Secretary of the Province's Governance and Legislation Think Tank, pointed to examples of Lorestan's water challenges, including the Garkhshab and Rangban water pumping stations and the problems caused by the floods of 2018, and emphasized the necessity of optimal utilization of water resources in the path of sustainable development of the province.

Referring to the limitation of financial resources and the need to increase the effectiveness of credits, he considered it necessary to prioritize water projects and focus resources on the completion of several key projects instead of scattered distribution of funds.

The head of the think tank also considered it important to move towards the economic valuation of water and to check the degree of realization of the strategic plans of the responsible institutions and emphasized the need to analyze the performance of the plans and identify implementation obstacles.

According to him, accurate identification of obstacles and implementation problems can provide the basis for drafting legal proposals and reforming water governance mechanisms in the province.

water governance reform; From institutional coordination to sustainable development

In summing up the discussions of this meeting, it was emphasized the necessity of a comprehensive look at Lorestan's water resources issues and simultaneous attention to institutional reforms, inter-institutional coordination, effective implementation of laws, monitoring of withdrawals, economic considerations and prioritization of infrastructure projects.

The discussed topics show that the sustainable management of water resources, in addition to the implementation of technical and infrastructure plans, requires policy reform, increased coordination between responsible institutions and targeted use of financial resources; An approach that can improve the effectiveness of programs and more sustainable exploitation of water resources in Lorestan province.