Since climate change, intermittent droughts with various severities, poor management and uncontrolled abstraction of water resources, and inattention to the balance of these resources have caused the water crisis in recent decades, it is vitally important to study the water scarcity, its changes in the future, and the effect of climate change and drought on the scarcity through appropriate management policies in the agricultural sector. To achieve this goal, the present study selected the Fasa plain in Iran and calculated its water poverty index (WPI) from 2008 to 2018 using parametric and non-parametric statistical tests. Also, the study calculated the correlation coefficient between the WPI and climate change and drought in the study area. It then evaluated the effects of water resources management policies in the agricultural sector on the poverty index. The results showed that water consumption had the greatest weight in calculating the WPI. The WPI has fluctuated between 0.297 and 0.678 in the Fasa plain, and the worst situation of water poverty was experienced in 2014. Despite its insignificance, the downward trend in the WPI showed that water resources management has become more unfavorable over time. Finally, it was concluded that the WPI in the Fasa plain was more dependent on drought than on climate change in the short term. Therefore, managing water resource consumption in this plain is vitally important, especially in drought conditions. The results also showed that reducing water consumption in the agricultural sector can significantly improve the WPI. Therefore, solving the water crisis in this plain, given the drought conditions and its future trend, requires policies improving water-use efficiency in the agricultural sector.

In this study, rural poverty in Iran is investigated applying a multidimensional approach, association rules mining technique, and Levine, F and Tukey tests to household data of 2008. The results indicate that poverty in its multi-dimensions is an epidemic problem in rural Iran. The results also exhibit that there are 11 patterns of poverty in the rural areas including four main patterns with 99.62% coverage and seven subpatterns with nearly 0.38% coverage. In these patterns, housing and household education are the most important dimensions of poverty and income poverty is the least important dimension. Government income support policy to households, in enforcement the law of targeting subsidies, cannot be regarded as pro poor policy but it follows other political aspects.

The sudden changes such as the drought of the 1980s and 1990s as well as the devastating floods of 2018 and 2019 have made water resource management in Khuzestan province a major challenge. Since one of the main ultimate goals of creating an exploitation system and its functions is to increase farmers' resilience to sudden changes, the purpose of this study is to measure the resilience of exploitation systems from agricultural water in irrigation and drainage networks of Khuzestan province. The obtained results are analyzed and compared.

Water market is one of the modern issues in demand management in face of water scarcity, which is increasingly used in different parts of the world as a tool for optimal allocation of water consumption and transfer of water to consumers with higher final efficiency. Despite the benefits of forming a water market, such market is not yet developed in developing countries, such as Iran. Accordingly, this study examines the economic impact of water market design on farmers’ livelihood in Iran. The data of this study were collected using a multistage random sampling method from 100 users with water rights in the irrigation network of Ramjerd plain in Fars province. The data was analyzed using positive mathematical programming and scenario making. The results showed that with the formation of the water market, the gross margin of the total lands with irrigation network of Ramjerd plain increased from 2,013.080 billion Rials to 2,194.2200 billion Rials. As a result, the agricultural economic situation of the region experienced an increase of 9%. therefore an appropriate legal and regulatory structure is recommended to create a water market on the lands located within the irrigation networks.