Mohammad Ali Rahimi Jamnani - Expert in Tehran Water-Soil Consultant Engineers Company
Ehteram Ghelichzadeh - Expert in Tehran Water-Soil Consultant Engineers Company
Hossein Taghipour - Expert in Regional Water Organization of East Azerbayejan Province
Hossein Abouali - Expert in Regional Water Organization of East Azerbayejan Province

Participatory management in irrigation is among the issues which were provoked for discussion in recent decade for exploiting the irrigation and drainage networks of different countries irrespective of their involving infrastructural facilities. Considering the competition in consumption of agricultural water and optimum use of accessible water resources, generally the governmental management faces serious challenges in meeting the needs of users. On the other hand, the private sector looks at it doubtfully because of high risk in investment on agricultural water. In this study the manner of creating participative irrigation management in Foumanat Irrigation Network (Gilan Province) and Soufichai Irrigation Network (East Azerbaijan Province) has been studied and discussed. Foumanat Irrigation Network is a network with an age of more than 30 years and covers an area approximately 50,000 hectares. The main crop of the area is rice. Soufichai Irrigation Network is about 8 years old and covers an area about 12,000 hectares. The main crop of the area are cereals and fruits.

Participatory Management, Agricultural Water, Risk Taking, Governmental Management, Foumanat, Soufichai