Challenges of Governance and Integrated Urban Water Resources Management (Case Study: Cities of Bushehr Province)

Additive and Negative impacts of climate change in recent years, such as consecutive drought, simultaneously with increasing urban population and rate urbanization, has caused  most countries in the world, including Iran,  faced a shortage of accessible water resources; But in response to these shortcomings, managers and decision-makers at different levels, without considering the interests of all stakeholders and their participation in related decisions, by emphasizing supply-oriented solutions and have refrained implementation of integrated water resources management. This study aims to identify and evaluate the challenges of governance and integrated management of urban water resources in a descriptive-analytical method. For this purpose, after determining and extracting the desired indicators using the opinions of academic experts and managers, and decision-makers related to the subject,  Shannon entropy weighting methods to weigh these challenges and the combined TOPSIS ranking method to determine and display the situation the cities of Bushehr province have been used in relation to each other. According to the results; The challenges of "secession and numerous decision-making organizations in water resources management" and "emphasis on water supplying policies" with weights of 0.089 and 0.086, respectively, were identified as the most important challenges.  The results of the study of selected indicators of water resources governance and analysis of the quantitative research model have shown that the cities of Bushehr, Genaveh, and Deylam at the level of "absolutely desirable governance", Borazjan city at the level of "optimal governance", Ahram, Khormoj, and Assaluyeh at the level of "governance" On average, the cities of Kangan and Jam are at the level of "unfavorable rule" and the city of Deir is at the level of "completely undesirable rule".