Identify and Evaluate Stakeholders in Groundwater Resource Governance (Case Study: Hamedan-Bahar Plain)

Understanding groundwater resource systems is crucial to protecting and monitoring them. Despite many studies on water resources management and related issues and biosafety, Attempts to systematically identify, classify, or analyze stakeholders and the importance of their role and position in participatory management and governance of water resources are very rare. Therefore, this study is to identify and understand the importance of stakeholders in terms of power and interests in the field of groundwater resources in the Hamadan-Bahar plain. The statistical population of the study includes farmers exploiting groundwater resources and experts of organizations related to groundwater resources in the Hamadan-Bahar plain.  Based on the results of experts opinions matrix and farmers, the regional water organization, MPs and the water and sewerage organization with averages of  93.35, 6.7 and 6.77  with the highest power, respectively, Also, in terms of benefits, farmers, regional water organization and Jihad-e-Agriculture organization have higher benefits with averages of 6.97, 16.7 and 5.5, respectively. Also, the results of the Mann-Whitney test showed that there is no significant difference between the opinions of the two groups in terms of power and interests of stakeholders. According to both groups, the most benefits are related to farmers because they are the main actors and stakeholders in the use and exploitation of groundwater resources. Based on the matrix of stakeholders, the necessary strategies were adopted for each sector. The results of this study can be considered as an initial understanding and identification of stakeholders and then as a basis for analysis with emphasis on the development of programs and strategies needed to improve the protection and exploitation of groundwater resources.