*4.1. Potential Limits and Counteractions*

For the first issue, "Mitigate water shortage", the assessment of costs and benefits of the current hydraulic infrastructures may result in the possibility of a balance or positive feedback between the two. In this case, the conservation and reuse of the No-Ras qanat envisaged in this paper will improve the current situation, acting as an additional source of water supply. The implementation, conservation and enhancement activities will instead require a substantial amount of funding. If the Iranian government or the local institutions are unable to support them with through ad hoc funding, one possible option would be to apply for specific funds from the Horizon Europe Clusters 2—Culture Creativity and Inclusive Society (for the heritage aspect), Cluster 5—Climate, Energy and Mobility (for climate related issues), Cluster 6—Food, Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment (for food), many of which have yet to come out. These kinds of calls embrace wide topics and aggregate a large number of stakeholders. This solution also applies to the development of the water protocol, which would be part of the implementation phase.

As for "Mis-management and/or lack of documentation" (Issue 2), some members of the local community or other actors identified in this study may not be willing to join the council. Therefore, to consider the council sufficiently represented, it would be necessary to have at least a qanat council manager (mirab), the water clock operator (kayyal) and the accountant (hesabdar), together with one representative from the local farmers and the municipality of Chavan. Other figures from national bodies, such as MCHT, RWWTC and RAJO, may not directly be part of the council or covering operational roles, while it is essential for guaranteeing the council effectiveness to include members of the local community.

The activities related to "Loss of technical skills" (issue 3) may encounter the following types of problems: 1. lack of funding for organizing training and purchasing non-invasive sustainable technologies; 2. low participation of locals in training courses for moqannis and professional figures working in the qanat. In the first case, if the Iranian Government or local institutions are unable to provide funding for these activities, economic support can be sought in the Horizon Europe funds, in particular Clusters 2, 5 or 6 (see above). In addition to these lines of funds, the training can also be organized within the framework of capacity building projects, such as the EU-funded Erasmus+ Capacity Building KA1–3, involving not only local actors but also national bodies, private companies and universities. The second problem could be solved by extending the call for training also outside the borders of the region, thus, attracting people from other parts of the country.

As for issues 1 and 3, the activities related to issue 4 (lack of awareness) also present mainly potential economic problems. For example, economic support is crucial for developing signals and panels, creating webpages and other online tools, as well as for organizing conferences. For all these activities, we propose the same solution already identified in the cases of issues 1 and 3, to apply for the Clusters 2, 5 or 6 (see above) of the Horizon Europe programs.

In the event of low attendance at conferences and meetings, invitations can be extended to national and international guests in order to give greater prominence to this project. The same goes for visits to the qanat for children, families and schools. If local participation does not meet the expectations, schools and families from other regions of the country will be invited.

Problems related to the last issue may mostly arise due to the difficulties in conducting interviews for collecting oral history among the locals. One possible solution to solve the issue could be that of gathering only available stories from publications or the web.

### *4.2. Qanat as Moral Heritage*

The solution proposed for the No-Ras qanat and the issues identified for its conservation and reuse also make it necessary to consider the relationship between the old infrastructure of the qanat and the people living in its premises, according to what the authors of [20] described as "moral landscape". The changes proposed are not neutral but will rather affect people that, in some cases, do not show direct personal or cultural connection with the qanats and their history. The social background may then divide the community between those looking at the project as something "bad" or "wrong" that will cause substantial damage, at least in the short term, and those who instead consider it "good" or "useful" and that it will enhance the area, reconnect the population to a partially forgotten past, also providing clean water in a sustainable way. Branduini et al., demonstrated that this dichotomy is partially due to the lack of awareness towards the history and benefits that this building may bring [36]. That is why Group of activities 4 and 5 are critical to allow the project to be fully understood by the entire community. In Ertsen's words, "*Relations need continuous confirmation, reconstruction and adaptation; maintaining stability is hard work for all human agents, precisely because other human agents and their non-human colleagues strike back*" [20].

### **5. Conclusions**

In this article, we applied the guidelines from ICOMOS-IFLA on rural landscapes [33] to preserve, manage and reuse a historical hydraulic system, in particular, a water irrigation system, such as qanats and similar hydraulic structures, which are attested from the Mediterranean basin (e.g., Spain, Morocco, Italy, Libya, Egypt, Syria, etc.) to the Middle and Far East (e.g., Oman, Yemen, Iran, Armenia, Afghanistan and China), both in urban and rural areas. For each problem and recommendation that emerged in Branduini et al., several actions were also proposed based on the ICOMOS-IFLA guideline criteria [36]. In the discussion, we critically evaluated the potential problems affecting each activity proposed and provided possible solutions.

The testing of this methodology will allow for replication on any type of traditional rural landscape and it will:


In the specific case of the No-Ras qanat, the current proposal should be ideally used by the RWWTC, RAJO and the municipality in collaboration with the other actors and beneficiaries identified to draft a masterplan encompassing the different groups of activities and hypothesizing costs and potential funding opportunities. This will bring multiple benefits both for the urban community of Chavan in terms of urban layout rationalization, increases in the economic value of buildings and other public and private assets, attraction of tourists visiting the qanat as well as researchers and farmers visiting the Centre for Organic farming in order to export its methodologies and approaches.

However, more than anything, our hope is that this project will have a positive impact on both the cities and citizens of Chavan and Tabriz in raising awareness on this important Iranian traditional heritage.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, F.Z. (Federico Zaina), P.B. and F.Z. (Fereshteh Zavvari); methodology, F.Z. (Federico Zaina), P.B. and F.Z. (Fereshteh Zavvari); analysis, F.Z. (Fereshteh Zavvari) resources, F.Z. (Fereshteh Zavvari); data curation, F.Z. (Federico Zaina); writing—original draft preparation, F.Z. (Federico Zaina); writing—review and editing, P.B.; visualization, F.Z. (Federico Zaina) and F.Z. (Fereshteh Zavvari). All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Informed Consent Statement:** This paper, builds on a previous research [36], for which informed consent was already obtained from all the subjects involved.

**Data Availability Statement:** The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

**Acknowledgments:** The authors wish to acknowledge the manager of the Fath Abad Garden and the moqanni of the No-Ras qanat for their help and support during the fieldwork and the extensive information provided, including photos and videos.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.

#### **Notes**

