Tragedy of the Commons in Groundwater Resources And Evaluating Strategies to Achieve Sustainable Development
Keywords
Loading...
Authors
Issue Date
2019-08-29
Language
en
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
At present, many countries (including Iran) face "extremely high" levels of water
stress, which means more than 80 percent of the water available to agricultural, domestic,
and industrial users is withdrawn from groundwater resources annually. Based on the
statistics, the agriculture sector is responsible for consuming more than 90 percent of water
in Iran. To date, the growing demand for water in the agriculture sector has largely been met
by mining fossil groundwater resources. Indeed, about 90 percent of groundwater use
belongs to the agriculture sector. Needless to say, this unsustainable trend cannot continue
for a long time since groundwater resources are limited in practice. So, decision‐makers need
doing some urgent, effective actions to handle this problem. The main objective of this study
is understanding the underlying cause of the problem and evaluating usually suggested
policies to address the crisis. The SD methodology is used. the model is based on “tragedy of
the commons” theory and tries to explain how farms attempt to maximize their profits turns
to a serious threat for the sustainability of groundwater resources. In the following, the model
has been used to evaluate various strategies for avoiding the depletion of groundwater
resources. For this purpose, “gap analysis” has been used. In gap analysis, the future under
the present strategy is forecasted. Then, objectives or desired future is identified and the gap
between the objectives and the future conditions under the current strategy is determined.
Finally, new strategies which will help to close the gap will be designed. In the end, it is
concluded that; (1) the government should consider the concept of maximum sustainable
yield (MSY) and control the size of irrigated land, share of high‐water demand crops, and
number of wells (2) improving irrigaon efficiency and many other policies are fruitless if the
government do not consider the rebound effect and combined policies should be adopted (3)
even by changing the water governance to eliminate the tragedy of the commons, overshoot
and collapse can happen due to misperception
Key Words: Water Management, Groundwater Resources, Sustainability, Tragedy of the
Commons, System Dynamics, Iran, Strategy Planning, Sustainable Water Resources Solutions, Water Resilience, Unsustainable Management Strategies, Systems Thinking, Integrated Water Resources Modeling, Archetypes, Overshoot and Collapse, Rebound Effect, Gap Analysis
Description
Citation
Supervisor
Faculty
Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen