نشریه آب و توسعه پایدار
سال ششم شماره 2 (پیاپی 13، پاییز 1398)

Three vital sources of Water-Energy-Food (WEF) are inextricably interrelated so that may also produce environmental impacts such as greenhouse gas emissions in production/delivery process. Therefore, green-house-gas emission control plays a key role in WEF nexus management. Effective planning and management of limited WEF resources to meet current and future socioeconomic demands for sustainable development is challenging. Nexus management for WEF security necessitates integrated tools that are useful for effective planning and management strategies and policies. Hence, the comprehensive tools should be used for identifying the trade-offs and interactions among various sectors of water, energy, and food. In this study, the nexus in the integrated management of the sources by optimisation method is investigated. Also, a hypothetical optimisation model of the water, energy, and food nexus is examined. This model is applied to quantitatively analyse the interrelationships and trade-offs among system components including energy supply, electricity generation, water supply-demand, food production, and mitigation of environmental impacts. The results demonstrated how these types of analyses could be helpful for decision makers and stakeholders to make cost-effective decisions for optimal WEF management.

Water, food, and energy supply is one of the main issues that the growing world population has been faced, and Iran is not excepted. Following the UN Millennium Development Goals, researchers have presented a variety of interdisciplinary approaches to achieve a dynamic balance between the resource production and consumption. The most important approach is the Water, Energy, and Food (WEF) Nexus. Due to the available resources scarcity which are intensifying on a daily basis, every opportunity should be exploited to balance the current consumption and resources. The Nexus approach enhances productivity by integrating water, energy, and their recycles. This article refers to the strategic relationship between sustainable development with respect to the Nexus of water, food, and energy, as well as identifying the policies of these three sectors, to ensure that they are targeted for optimal use of resources.

Water consumption is rapidly increasing due to population growth, urbanisation, development of agriculture and industry, etc. Also, factors such as climate change, changes in rainfall patterns, inefficient water distribution systems, and changes in water consumption pattern have led to the increase in water consumption compared to the volume of water (both surface and subsurface water resources). This has led to a spectrum of power relationships from cooperation to competition and tension between upstream and downstream communities as well as countries in shared water basins. This situation, especially in arid areas of the world will increase various tensions on local, national, and transnational scales. Findings indicate that the water crisis started a long time ago and will intensify in the future and water will be considered as a geopolitical issue. Political geography in the form of Hydropolitics, studies the cooperation and competition of interest groups on water resources at local, national, regional, and global levels to identify the interest groups’ behaviour in various areas of the world. It appears that water crisis plays an important role in relations between communities, especially in arid regions. Therefore, water will be the major concern of all developmental, security, and welfare approaches in many countries. According to the hydropolitics, in the future, the territorialisation of political-spatial units will be based on the water which is possible through coexistence and interaction.

Water restriction in Iran through history has led Iranians to think for a long time about smart measures for water management and they devise accurate and efficient methods for water distribution and division in such a way as to prevent water loss and to maintain justice. Iranians indigenous knowledge for agricultural water management was one of the most advanced agricultural systems in its time, which can be used to problems solving of water management in modern agriculture. The purpose of this paper is to study the traditional utilization management of water resources in the villages of Iran. Reviewing and analyzing the dimensions of water resources management among Iranian farmers has shown that water management in this country is a historical, social and cultural issue. This article investigates the component of water management system among villagers of Iran in three sections: water supply management, distribution and division management and water utilization management. In the current situation where the country is facing water scarcity and high water consumption in agriculture. The results of this study can provide valuable tips for transferring water resources management to villagers in all sectors of agricultural water management.

In this paper, a spatial analysis model is developed that identifies the required points for structural organizing operations at the level of large catchments. For this purpose, initially the nature of the organizing operation in the different structural sections is defined by different spatial constraints, Then the Arcmap software receives required base layers including topographic layer, land use layer, geology and communication routes and presents suggested outputs including the required position to organizing. The advantages of this model areincluding the possibility of defining the new constraints, appropriate processing speed, and providing a step-by-step guide in the software environment. To check the accuracy of the model in predicting the required points for organizing, location matching has been done randomly with field visits and database of studies of river organizing plans in Golestan province. The results of this section show that the proposed model is capable of predicting the required structural organizing points with proper accuracy.

Ecosystem services modeling has been the focus over the past two decades as a solution to reduce the problems caused by unstable management of natural resources and water-related ecosystem services are among the most studied. There are two types of ecosystem hydrological services modeling include traditional hydrological softwares and specialized softwares of ecosystem services. The present study introduces and compares some softwares according to required data for run the model, ease of use, ability to answer the questions and interpretation the results. SWAT and VIC are examples of traditional softwares with an emphasis on constructive processes of ecosystem services, while InVEST and ARIES are specialized ecosystem services softwares with an emphasis on spatial visualization of these services at the landscape level. If the appropriate data and required expertise are available to implement the model, SWAT and VIC softwares are suggested that can provide more information and details to the user such as evapotranspiration, surface runoff, subsurface flow, sediment load, nitrate and total phosphorus. While InVEST and ARIES softwares are more suitable for non-specialists and they are able to provide a general picture of ecosystem services with less data.

Mining has been one of the long-standing activities required for human life. With increase in the share of various industries in human civilisation, the dependency on mineral resources has become more pronounced. Mining around the world affects surface and ground waters resources. Part of these risks is allocated to the workshop space inside the mine and the factory. Much of the other actions and reactions that occur outside the mineral environment in nature, become leading to contamination of water, soil, and air. These impacts could be due to inappropriate extraction, unstructured design, lack of control over water leakage in mines, non-standard waste deposit, wastewater emancipation of processing factory, and non-reclamation of the mine. Corrective actions can reduce the severity of these effects and significantly control them. The level of water usage can be minimised by changing the extraction method, proper reuse and water conservation practices. The negative impacts of mining on water quality can be reduced through runoff control, waste management, and monitoring of mine outputs. Injection into caverns, suitable design, and mine reclamation can prevent groundwater exposure. At all mine personnel levels, the role of education and the justification of the developed requirements should not be forgotten since, without it, laws and regulations will not be effective.

It is inevitable to change the mindset in water resource management from an engineering perspective to a holistic one. Such an approach, which is identified with the concept of integrated water resource management, is formed based on the following concepts: integration between ecological and social systems, attention to water governance system and stakeholder participation, institutional capacity of water resource system, adaptation to environmental changes, and learning procedures. Water institution is analyzed through its three institutional components including water law, water policy, and water administrative structure. In this article, in particular, the components of water resource management administrative structure within the study area of Qeshm Island were defined focusing on the study of written rules and documents. It was indicated from the findings of this study that the official position of the organizations involved in the water resources issue is not uniform in the rules, which has created ambiguities in the interpretation of organizational tasks and communications, and may lead to subjective notions on inter-organizational relationships and legal responsibilities due to mismanagement. The most important organizational issue in Qeshm Island is the presence of several trustees in the water resource management. The presence of several trustees with different levels of power requires planning and coordination between relevant organizations to achieve the goals of integrated water management.

Several issues impact the water sustainability of a river basin. Among them are the social, economic, and environmental aspects. However, they are often treated separately, and not as an integrated, dynamic process. In order to integrate the hydrologic, environmental, life and policy issues, as well as the existing pressures and policy responses in one quantitative, dynamic, and aggregated indicator, a watershed sustainability index (WSI), which uses a pressure–state–response function, was developed and is proposed in this paper. Applied to a 2,200 km2 Unesco–HELP demonstration basin in Brazil (SF Verdadeiro), the value obtained for WSI was 0.65, which represents an intermediate level of basin sustainability.

To investigate the reason for decreasing Qanat’s discharge and providing technical and agricultural solutions, 15 limes of Qanats were selected in the Khorasan Razavi province. The discharge of Qanats in the years of 1386 and 1396 was measured together with filling of the questionnaires. The results show that the mean discharge of Qanats decreased by 21%. The reasons for this reduction include: technical issues (disregard for the technical nature of the Qanats), and management issues (disregard for proper utilisation of the Qanats and lack of credit). This research recommends some solutions in order to adapt to the decrease in Qanats’ discharge. The most important solutions include: cultivating products with less water requirements and improving drought tolerance, improving farm management by changing the pattern of crops, using modern technology, planning for proper use of Qanat water, and the integrity of the lower land of Qanats.

Due to increasing imbalance between water supply and water demand, sustainability of water resources has become as a key issue in national and international water policy making. The development of water quantity assessment focusing on water balances have been identified as a main tool for guiding water policy and management at different decision-making scales, such as quantitative management and efficient allocation of water resources. In Iran, the WBA is being conducted every five years for about 609 watersheds. Although the water authorities are provided different guidelines and frameworks to improve the WBA, yet there are many obstacles which lead to high uncertainty in water balance assessment. On the other hands, there are some institutional issues which is associated to the process of conducting WBA and effect on proper policy making including problems related to data and measurements, time consuming process of studying WBA which itself takes another five years and some stakeholders do not accept the final results i.e. the renewable water or some water consumptions estimates. It is planned to identify the UPWB through online questionnaire forms and holding different expert meetings which will be finalized in a coming national symposium. It should be noted that the national symposium has two parts in which the second part is planned in a strategic way to address some practical resolutions. This investigation will provide the results of unsolved problems in WBA in Iran. This note explains the challenges of water balance assessment in Iran and the neccesity of a shared vision to understand the current situation.