Contradiction of Opportunity/Challenge Development: Sustainable Management of Water Resources in Kurdistan Province in Institutional and Public Conflicts

The present research, by problematizing the water crisis in Iran and Kurdistan province, has tried to analyze the situation of institutional and public water transfer disputes as a solution to this crisis. In this regard,  the question of whether the transfer of water in the province has provided an opportunity for its development or if it has led to development bottlenecks, analyzing the debates and controversies of two institutional perspectives in the form of experts and managers of the regional water company of the province has been raised. Kurdistan and civil and environmental activists are concerned about the transfer of water from the west to the east of the province. Therefore, the sustainable development approach, which seeks the connection and interaction of the three spheres of society, economy and environment, has formed the theoretical basis of this research. The methodology is based on theoretical and experimental goals and position, while institutional ethnography is based on the experiences, knowledge, views of the interviewees [31 semi-structured interviews], and the review of statistics and documents related to the discussion of water, and its leading crisis has been water transfer in Kurdistan province. According to the analysis of 6 secondary categories, the results show that managers and experts consider climate change and natural obstacles to water exploitation as the basis of many conditions and obstacles to sustainable management of water resources, while activists focus on the weakness of sustainable management of water resources. They also emphasize, managers and institutional experts highlight the lack of integrated water management and the lack of funds as the basis of institutional weakness and the indifference of the academic elite and provincial representatives to the water issue, and the lack of bargaining power in allocating water to the province. They consider political issues and lack of public participation as the reason for this. And finally, it can be concluded that water transfer is not considered an opportunity but a bottleneck and challenge for the province's development.