Factor analysis of water resources governance in the agricultural sector and its effect on the political geography of Iran

The lack of optimal management of water resources as the main input of the agricultural sector is a major challenge on the way to realizing sustainable agriculture in the political geography of Iran.Various solutions have been proposed for this serious challenge, all of which go back to reforming the governance process in water resources management in Iran.Based on this, the aim of the current research is to investigate the challenges of water governance in the agricultural sector of Iran.The present research method is a qualitative and quantitative combined method in solving the problem.The statistical population includes experts and experts in the issue of water governance in the agricultural sector, who were selected through non-probability sampling in a targeted manner. 90 researcher-made questionnaires, which were the result of face-to-face interviews with 7 experts in the field of water governance in the agricultural sector of the country, were distributed among the studied community, and after collecting them, 83 questionnaires were analyzed.The collected data were analyzed in two parts of descriptive statistics (prevalence, mean, standard deviation) and inferential (exploratory factor analysis) with Spss-14 software.Based on the results of the research, the challenges of water governance in Iran's agricultural sector were summarized in six factors that explained 60.35% of the total variance. Social challenges contributed the most (25.63) and natural and human challenges contributed the least (4.46) in explaining the variance of the variables under investigation.Also, considering the participatory nature of governance and the results of this research on social challenges, it was suggested that the roles and powers of the actors involved in water governance should be carefully determined and the capacity building of the stakeholders should be seriously put on the agenda.