These seminars have served to highlight a whole range of sophisticated systems and approaches that have been developed for the small-scale harvesting of water resources over the last three millennia in Iran and neighbouring countries (Talebbeydokhti et al., 1999). The seminars also provided for comparison of different cosmologies for approaching the use and management of water resources.

An example is a thinking tool (Tri-cycle Indigenous Knowledge Thinking Tool) developed by the Research Station for Indigenous Studies at Khorhe, that facilitates understanding of the world through the Iranian indigenous perspective (Emadi and Abbassi, 1999). In short, in indigenous epistemology, a greater emphasis is placed on the interconnections between things and not so much on the things themselves. In traditional belief systems, animals, plants, people, wind, water, rivers, and mountains are all the interconnected parts of a greater living whole. A combination of all these elements and their interconnections make up the indigenous world, the world in which a man is born, recognizes his place, fulfills his destiny of service, and then dies. Understanding indigenous practices, value systems, decision-making and behavioural patterns requires that researchers too pay closer attention to the interconnections between the things and phenomena they discover. In contrast to much conventional research, exploring the indigenous world requires that the findings be ‘combined’ and assembled into systems and not taken apart and ‘analysed’ into their composing parts. This holistic perspective (in contrast to the reductionist viewpoint) allows one to imagine the panoramic philosophy of life that predominates in indigenous peoples’ thinking and behaviour

References
Emadi, M.H.; Abbassi, E. 1999. The wise world of water works in an Iranian village: A holistic study of indigenous water relations in the Posht-e godar region (Markazi Province, Iran). In: Talebbeydokhti, N.; Telvari, A.; Heydarian, S.A. (eds), Proceedings of the Regional Workshop on Traditional Water Harvesting Systems (Tehran, 1-5 May 1999), pp. 145-160 Ministry of Jihad-e-Sazandegi, Dept. of Watershed Management, Tehran.

Talebbeydokhti, N.; Telvari, A.; Heydarian, S.A. (eds). 1999. Proceedings of the Regional Workshop on Traditional Water Harvesting Systems. (Tehran, 1-5 May 1999), pp. 145-160. Ministry of Jihad-e-Sazandegi, Dept. of Watershed Management, Tehran.