The report on “Integrated Water Resource Management in the Zayandeh Rud River” (Iran) outlines the participatory process and the resulting strategies with measures for their implementation. It is one outcome of a project funded by BMBF.

The Zayandeh Rud river basin in Central Iran is facing acute problems of water scarcity and unequal water distribution between sectors and regions. Forward-looking strategies for agricultural production are urgently needed. The imbalance between water quantity and demand over the last two decades has motivated policy makers and managers to seek measures and strategies to reduce agricultural water use while minimizing losses in agricultural revenues. Addressing this complexity requires adaptation strategies in agriculture and rural development based on multi-stakeholder interaction.

This report "Transformation Strategies in Agriculture" is one outcome of the project “Integrated Water Resources Management Zayandeh Rud (IWRM)” (3/2016-12/2018), funded by BMBF. 
It is the result of a strongly interactive process with local stakeholders designed and moderated in a cooperation between the German and Iranian project partners. The information gained in through the participatory process was synthesized into ten transformation strategies that are grouped into four focus areas (Capacity Development, Agricultural Management, Water Distribution, and Land Management and Soil Fertility). The participatory process and the resulting strategies with measures for their implementation are detailed in this report.

Important for the success of the agricultural transformation is the willingness of governments, farmers, donors, companies and civil society organizations to assume responsibilities, take risks and change behaviors at the level of individuals, organizations and society to pursue an accepted solution within the basin. Key to all the proposed transformation strategies in the report are activities to continue the development of a common knowledge base and set of tools, so that integrated resource management plans can be put forward and continually evaluated. Also emphasized is the need to involve all stakeholders to prevent fear of bias from hindering general acceptance of the tools. This is essential since none of the strategies can be expected to reduce basin-wide agricultural water use by themselves if the overall area of irrigated cultivated land area is not reduced.

The report has been published 2021 in ATB's publication series "Bornimer Agrartechnische Berichte", Volume 104, and can be downloaded free of charge as PDF file: https://www.atb-potsdam.de/fileadmin/generell/BABs/BAB_104_Transformation_Strategies_in_Agriculture.pdf .

S. Kraatz, M. Zare, J. A. Libra, P. Grundmann, M. N. Reyhani, O. Zamani, U. Hunstock, H. Jacobs (2021): Project Report: Integrated Water Resource Management in the Zayandeh Rud River Basin. Bornimer Agrartechnische Berichte (ISSN 0947-7314), Volume 104, 120 p.

Contact ATB: Dr. Judy Libra