Challenges of Territorial Cooperation on Common Groundwater Resources: through Grounded Theory

This paper examines the role of shared water resources in establishing territorial cooperation. To do so, the Abarkooh basin which lies on the border between the Yazd and Fars provinces has been singled out as our case study. Across this basin, the upstream and downstream villages all exploit a common groundwater reserve. Until the late 1970s, the exploitation of the common groundwater took place based on a systematic relationship between the basin’s upstream and downstream, which was associated with geographical distribution of vital resources and livelihood differentiation. However, the traditional cooperation has turned into competition and social tension, which contribute to the destruction of their shared water resource. This study has deployed the research method of grounded theory in order to answer the questions: how the shared water resource can serve as the groundwork for systematic interaction and cooperation, and under what conditions such systematic interaction may turn into a competitive confrontation. According to our field studies, the geoghraphical difference between the basin upstream and downstream led to the different possibilities accessed by the human communities in both areas. The same different possibilities gave rise to the creation and development of different economic systems under a condition to which we refer as livelihood differentiation. Livelihood differentiation in turn paved the way for the cooperative exploitation of the shared water resources. However, over the past decades, the exogenous socio-economic programs along with the climate change impaired the livelihood differentiation so that the traditional cooperation was replaced by competition.