An Analysis of the Water Crisis under Different Scenarios in the Agriculture Sector of Sistan Region: the Approach of Future Studies

The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of the future of water in the agricultural sector of the Sistan region. In this study, to determine the final drivers, we relied on Future Studies techniques and, by using the Expert Panel method, 23 drivers were identified and seven main drivers affecting the Sistan water crisis were used to write the scenarios by Delphi method. These factors included drought, dependence on external water resources, the lack of sufficient attention to water resources management, careless cultivation of crops with high water requirement, inappropriate irrigation methods, technological weakness of agriculture, and free water charges in the agriculture sector. Also, 86% of the Sistan region will be exposed to a severe water crisis in the future according to the hazard zonation map. Furthermore, probable conditions for each of these factors were presented, and using that, 3 scenarios with high acclimatization include the first, second, and third scenarios for the water crisis in Sistan, which were designed using the Wizard Scenario software. In these scenarios, three situations including: possible state (if the drivers remain in the current state), optimistic state (improvement of the condition), and pessimistic state (weakening of the condition) were designed for each of the factors. Cultivation of crops with high water requirement were in a pessimistic state, free water and drought in a possible state, and the other drivers in an optimistic state. In these scenarios, optimistic conditions were superior to others and formed most of the assumptions. It is expected that these scenarios would improve water and agricultural conditions in the Sistan Plain.