from supply expansion to demand management: a critical discourse analysis of water governance in iran

Water scarcity is a critical challenge in iran, yet policy discourse remains dominated by a supply-centric, infrastructure-driven paradigm. this study employs critical discourse analysis (cda) to examine how dominant narratives are constructed and sustained in iran’s water governance, using a corpus of laws, national development plans, ministerial speeches, and media texts. lexical, framing, and diachronic analyses reveal that supply-side terms appear approximately 7 times more frequently than demand management terms, reinforcing a persistent “hydraulic mission” narrative that frames scarcity as an engineering problem. this framing legitimizes large-scale supply interventions while marginalizing conservation, efficiency, and participatory governance. although recent policy documents show a modest increase in terms related to sustainability and climate adaptation, these remain secondary to the prevailing technocratic discourse. the findings underscore the need for a discursive shift toward framing water as a socio-ecological challenge, integrating efficiency, equity, and environmental resilience into policy design.