Leila Shariatyniya; Mehdi Ghorbani; Hossein Azarnivand; Majid Rahimi
Abstract
Rangelands, as socio-ecological systems, play a vital role in ensuring food security and livelihoods for communities. However, climate change and human factors pose serious threats to these ecosystems. In response to these challenges, governments have supported restoration and rehabilitation efforts ...
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Rangelands, as socio-ecological systems, play a vital role in ensuring food security and livelihoods for communities. However, climate change and human factors pose serious threats to these ecosystems. In response to these challenges, governments have supported restoration and rehabilitation efforts for rangelands. Natural resource governance has emerged as a novel approach in managing these systems, aiming to ensure the sustainability of rangelands by creating a shared understanding of resource conditions and suitable management regulations, as well as enhancing adaptive capacity in the face of the complexities of environmental changes and the uncertainties they bring.This study employs a social network analysis approach, utilizing the snowball sampling method and applying indicators of intra-group and inter-group link densities, as well as core-periphery structures. It assesses the status of cooperation and knowledge transfer relationships within the rangeland governance system in the Tarash County among stakeholders engaged in protective, developmental, and intermediary roles. The findings indicate a high degree of inter-group connections and the presence of strong structural openings, alongside a low level of intra-group connections and a network that remains less than optimal. This suggests that the knowledge structure governing rangelands in the area is not based on negotiation and is characterized by surplus knowledge processes, highlighting the inefficiency of ecological knowledge flow in enhancing adaptability among the organizational stakeholders involved in rangeland management in Tarash County.This study emphasizes the importance of social capital and reciprocal learning in strengthening collaborations and collective decision-making, demonstrating that establishing consensus among stakeholders with diverse objectives is key to successful adaptive governance.
Majid Rahimi; Arash Malekian; Amir Alambeigi
Abstract
Water is a source of life, even when it is abundant. In the last few years, the unreal certainty of water services in Iran has caused institutional structures of water to be unsuitable and incompatible with environmental changes, and when water-related crises such as drought, flood occurrence and in ...
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Water is a source of life, even when it is abundant. In the last few years, the unreal certainty of water services in Iran has caused institutional structures of water to be unsuitable and incompatible with environmental changes, and when water-related crises such as drought, flood occurrence and in the larger scale, climate change, are capable of flexibility and resilient in the face of these changes. In this regard, the recognition of the present governance system in the country is considered essential. Therefore, in this study, mode and regime of water governance were studied in one of the problem areas of water scarcity. In order to determine the mode of governance, questionnaires were used in two levels of the institution and local stakeholders. In order to determine the regime of governance, formal and informal institutional network analysis method was used in the Arsanjan, Neyriz, Kherameh and Estahban counties. The results of the governance mode showed that in ten sub-functions of governance under consideration, the more hierarchical mode has been observed. In addition, the results of the analysis of the institutional network also showed that the current governance regime in all four counties is a centralized (Rent-seeking) regime, which is considered a hierarchical governance mode feature. Finally, the combination of methods of governance and arrival to meta-governance is proposed.