Deh Salm Irrigation System

Resource System
Watershed and associated topography
Resource Units
Freshwater

The case of Deh Salm Irrigation takes place in the village of Deh Salm, 100 km west of Neh, the southernmost administrative center of the province of Khorasan in eastern Iran. The resource appropriated from Deh Salm Irrigation is water for irrigation and domestic uses (e.g. general washing purposes). At the beginning of the period, there was an extreme shortage of biological and physical resources withdrawn compared to the number of units available. Cultivators of this irrigation system were not capable of maintaining the qanat from where they draw their water. If the qanat was severely damaged, they had to rely on outside people who had enough capital and expertise to do the repairing work. This subjected the cultivators to outside influence and domination.

This case study is part of the original Common-Pool Resource (CPR) database. A summary of the original CPR coding conducted in the 1980s by Edella Schlager and Shui Yan Tang at Indiana University may be found under the CPR tab in the Institutional Analysis section below.