A Reflexive Narrative: From History of Socio-Environmental Development in the Middle East to Ecological Transformation of Water Governance in Yazd

For us, the modern appliance of traditional approach to face to current risks is a Reflexive Development. This article tries to explain the socio-environmental history of Yazd by depicting life via pictures of historical hydraulic structures left in this city. Yazd is a civilization that has expanded based on waterlessness. Based on the three basic reflexive elements that is transparency, public participation, and openness, the age of Qanats is explained among what we call the three ages of Qanat and Sustainability, Water Pumps and Risks, and Reflection for an Ecological Transformation. Through the reflexive historical-environmental analysis of the Middle East, this research discusses the main socio-environmental theories of the Qanat era around the ideas of climate change and drought, nomadic invasion, and oriental despotism. Then we assess the Iranian socio-environmental history with focus on Yazd where we search the history of this city based on historical hydraulic structures, the relations of people with each other and nature, and the dimensions of traditional water governance. What we can learn from this reflexive narrative, the history of water and life in Yazd and the analysis of Qanat civilization collapse after the industrial age rising and transition to the era of risk, is our modern preparations to face water risks through an ecological way of transformation and reflexive route of development. This is a fundamental research to find the function of an updated dynamic tradition in finding new solutions adaptable with nature in water governance, which will take us one step forward to a reflexive development.