جستجوی مقالات مرتبط با کلیدواژه « privatization » در نشریات گروه « آب و خاک »

Since the 1990 s, a number of countries adopted the transfer policies or irrigation management ‎transfer (IMT), and in some cases, the incentive to reform water laws was provided (Bruns et al., ‎‎2005). Making of the investment decisions and water allocation by local and private organizations ‎requires that the‏ ‏water users‏ ‏have confidence in the quantity and time they receive water and this ‎requires the existence of legal transparency. Therefore, water laws should provide a full and ‎indispensable set of rights for use of water (Bayat et al., 2016). In this study, by focusing on the ‎privatization of agricultural water, relevant law clauses were extracted during different periods, and ‎the effectiveness of these rules on management of water resources was analyzed‏.‏

In this study, the purpose of “law” is all ratification of parliament, official codes, and ‎administrative regulations. Since land containing groundwater resources are usually governed by ‎private management, the focus is on the rules associated with irrigation networks with surface water ‎resources. To implement the study all documents related to water laws, approved by various ‎organizations of the country, included the resolutions and bills of the Islamic Parliament of Iran, ‎national development plans, the resolutions of the Supreme Council for Water, the efforts of the ‎relevant Ministries, and published procedures and executive regulations. Then the material related to ‎the issue of privatizing and reducing the government’s leadership and authority, or common and ‎applicable laws that lacked relevance to privatization issues were extracted from them and, besides ‎international documents in this regard, were analyzed in a descriptive way‏.‏

Until 1929, water governance issues were solved by the common rule of society in the ownership ‎of wells and qanats. Then, by compiling civil code, water governance was enforced using this law. In ‎‎1944, with the approval of the law allowing the establishment of the irrigation agency, the ‎individual aspect of irrigation was limited to traditional water rights and the government supervised ‎all irrigation affairs. In this period, for the first time, public and private institutions were allowed to ‎build and invest in irrigation networks. By approving the establishment of companies to exploit ‎lands downstream of the dams, the exploitation of command area of irrigation networks was given to ‎natural persons and non-governmental individuals. After the Islamic revolution, according to the ‎constitution and the approval of the cabinet of ministers, the government was obliged to dispose of ‎its shares in the operation of irrigation networks by maintaining state ownership of the ‎infrastructure. Nevertheless, the devolution of these private companies only occurred in the ‎ownership of the shares and these companies are still dominated by the government in management, ‎structure and the way of referral. The development plans of the country and the approvals of the ‎supreme council of water have stressed the acceleration of the privatization process and the ‎reduction of government incumbency in water projects, but financial support and the executive ‎program have not been taken into account to meet their goals. The set of criteria for operation and ‎maintenance of irrigation networks was notified to the ministry of power in 2005. However, except ‎for identifying the competence of companies, other parts of it could not be implemented, so it is ‎needed to update these instructions. In the study of international experiences of water reform with ‎the approach of privatization in developed (United States and France) and developing countries ‎‎(Chile, Mexico, Turkey and India), some cases such as clear and transparent water rights with ‎guarantee the implementation of the rules, financial independence of water custodian, appropriate ‎water pricing, establishing a legal framework for privatization process and conducting regular ‎assessments to evaluate the results of transfer of management is considered as the most important ‎measures in water privatization.‎

‏‌‏Conclusions

By changing the policy of government from centralization to the participation of the private ‎sector and the stakeholders, the current laws in the field of water resources need to be reviewed. Due ‎to the importance of the subject, in this research, we proceed to aggregation rules and procedures ‎related to this discussion and review the consequences of implementing laws and policies of ‎privatization in irrigation networks. The results showed that although there are laws and regulations ‎to attract private sector capital, the time of implementation of water plans and low investment ‎profits has prevented the private sector investment in this sector. The generality of laws, disregard ‎for restrictions, climatic conditions and political changes in the country (such as change of ‎government), has made the implementation of water development programs less effective. In ‎addition, attracting the full political support at high levels of management and legislation of the ‎country, and the use of simple legal framework with accordance of the capacity of water users, were ‎the main factors in success of pioneer countries in water privatization.‎

Factors such as poor management and improper operation and maintenance, dissatisfaction of farmers, and the deterioration of irrigation networks under governmental management have made it essential to successfully transfer irrigation system's management to farmers. The purpose of this study was to identify the most important factors affecting successful transition to privatization of irrigation networks management from the viewpoint of water users in the Qazvin network. Sample size was determined using Cochran formula and individual farmers were selected using multi-stage sampling method (n=127). A questionnaire was used to collect the data. The validity of the questionnaire was approved by the judgment of a panel of faculty members and experienced experts. In order to measure the reliability of the questionnaire, Cronbach Alpha coefficient was calculated for the main scales of the questionnaire (0.92). The results showed that the most important factors were facility and financial support of government, skill and proficiency level of irrigation network operators, transparency of the goals and the institutional management method, trust in farmers and their involvement in different activities, and development of technology and machinery. By using exploratory factor analysis, factors in the successful transition were summarized in three factors including trusting and financial/technical support of farmers, administrative transparency, and education and dissemination of information.

Today, privatization of agricultural extension services is recognized as an appropriate approach to compensate for any weakness that the traditional extension system might have. The primary objective of this research was to study the attitude of the national top managers (including general managers, their deputies, and extension managers) of Jihad-e Keshavarzi Organizations (JKO), toward privatization of agricultural extension. Twenty JKOs from 20 provinces were randomly selected for study. A questionnaire was developed to the gather information needed and 107 general managers, deputies, and extension managers were randomly selected for this purpose. A pilot test was conducted on a similar population and reliability coefficients of (A Cronbach Alpha) 81%, and 89% were obtained for the attitude and managerial characteristics of the questionnaire respectively. The results showed that 93.83% of the subjects had either “positive” or “relatively positive” attitude toward privatization of agricultural extension. The majority of the subjects indicated that privatization of extension could provide a “supplementary means to complement the existing public extension services”. A hierarchical regression analysis indicated that the independent variables collectively are responsible for 17.4% (R2 =0.174) of the variation in dependent variables. This indicates that a considerable amount of variances in dependent variables are yet unaccounted for that could be explained by variables that were not investigated in this study (requiring further study).