A Preliminary Review of an Unprecedented Cross-Provincial Water Transfer Plan in Iran: No Clear Vision and Stakeholder Mapping

Abstract

This review paper investigates unprecedented recent investment and capital spending in cross-provincial water management and transfer infrastructure in Iran. Although numerous cross-provincial water transfer plans have been implemented in the country, the scale, approach, and stakeholders involved in this recent national plan are unprecedented. This notable national plan includes long water transfer pipelines that pass through seven provinces, aiming at transferring desalinated water from the Persian Gulf to the interior. Regarding the scale, there have been a few cases of transferring water at the cross-provincial level, but mostly across two provinces. The approach has also changed in this plan. Long-term efforts to construct dams for electricity or farming with limited geographical impact have been shifted to desalinating water, long-distance pipe-laying, large-scale electric-powered water pumping, and long-distance underground tunnels. Stakeholders have become more diverse, from the council members of a small village to high-level decision makers at the national level. This paper elaborates on these extraordinary alterations by exemplifying a few other contemporary case studies of water transfer plans in Iran. It also examines the fundamental logic, bottlenecks, and future scenarios of this large-scale plan.