Foremost in dealing effectively with water conflicts is comprehensive analysis. The global surge in water conflicts, coupled with the imperfect success of solutions, initiatives, and policies, calls for a critical reevaluation of the paradigms that guide approaches to water conflicts. The approach taken—conflict management, resolution, or transformation—has a decisive impact on addressing water conflicts, from the initial analysis to the crafting of policies and their practical implementation. Iran is a prime example of this, with water conflicts increasing at various scales despite concerted mitigation efforts. This paper, through a qualitative content analysis of 159 peer-reviewed papers collected via a systematic review, aims to delineate the prevailing approach to water conflict analysis within Iran's academic discourse, thereby partially shedding light on the shortcomings in both policy and practice. Water conflict resolution, and its respective models such as game theory and optimization–simulation, is the predominant approach in Iran's literature on water conflict analysis, thereby marginalizing attention dedicated to conflict management and transformation. This reflects an overarching focus on techno-economic functions to deal with water conflicts, often overlooking the myriads of managerial and societal factors. The adoption of water conflict transformation can be vital to rectify these deficits in conflict analysis, potentially with subsequent impacts on policy and practice.

Environmental changes can result in dramatic increases in human migration as households become unable to adapt to such changes. Addressing environmental migration is a complex puzzle that can become a wicked problem. Despite the growing literature on the nexus between environmental change and migration, the inextricable link between nature and society has made it difficult to establish causal relations between the two. To examine the relationship between environmental change and migration, it is necessary to develop a conceptual model that includes environmental changes as potential causes of rural-urban migration (RUM). Such a model should be built on an enhanced understanding of the different factors that stimulate environmentally induced RUM. This paper proposes such a model, focusing on loss of agricultural land, loss of agricultural productivity and the economic repercussions of these losses. The model is based on the model of Perch-Nielsen et al. but extends this model by incorporating additional factors. In our model, the three leading causes of RUM are climate change, human maladaptive activities, and hydro-climatic disasters (the push factors). In addition, there may be pull factors in the cities. RUM may be counteracted or reduced by governmental policy and individuals' characteristics. The model was applied to Iran. The results show that the model can help to bridge the knowledge gap regarding environmentally induced RUM and may inform policymaking on RUM and related issues, such as environmental management and adaptation to climate change.

Although good water governance (GWG) is a widely accepted concept, mistaking its principles for silver bullet approaches has hindered its successful applications. This highlights the idea that one-size-fits-all thinking does not satisfy the need to navigate toward sustainable outcomes in ever-changing complex water systems. This also indicates that endeavors toward governing water systems must be tailored to the specific context that these systems are nested within. Scholars have pointed out the importance of residents' input in contextualizing water governance practices. With that being said, this paper proposes an innovative approach to tailoring principles of GWG to the context by building an analytical framework upon which survey research was conducted. The survey, it took input from three categories of residents, namely experts, authorities, and experienced locals. Analyzing the data led to a group decision-making problem that was approached using fuzzy risk-based multiple-attribute decision-making methods, including technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution and ordered weighted averaging, while considering the amount of consensus among mentioned groups. Furthermore, to validate the results of the decision-making problem analysis, additional interviews were conducted to get a more pragmatic picture of the situation. Sistan Delta in Iran was selected as a case study mainly due to the current undesirable situation and also the international social, political, and environmental significance of the area. This study aims to take the first step of rethinking water governance in the area. The results indicated that to operationalize good governance, the principles of collaboration, legitimacy, adaptability, and trust and engagement must be prior considerations to redefine the water governance structure in the Sistan region.