Abstract:
Human civilizations have been created and developed adjacent water resources such as
rivers. The old Mesopotamia Civilization near Euphrates - Tigris Rivers, The Egypt
Civilization near Nile River, The India Civilization near Indus River and The Burned City
Civilization near Hirmand (Helmand) River and Hamoon lakes are samples of
aforementioned civilizations. Demise of old Civilizations occurred according to wars,
dangerous disasters and illness, droughts and deficiency of water. Today, with regards to
limitation of ancient empires, kingdoms and governments and creation of new small and
big countries, new boundaries have been established and the importance of fresh water
resources and transboundary rivers has been increased much more and after that several
challenges and disputes have been occurred between countries for accessing fresh water
over these resources and even some serious disputes and wars between countries have been
occurred in 20th century. According to aforementioned, government's consideration and
attempts of countries are toward compiling new methods for water resources management
specially based on principles of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM). Also
for decreasing challenges and disputes and prevention of new challenges, water treaties
based on international laws, and previous historic water rights and or the necessity to
friendship relations between countries could help us achieving to unique and more suitable
solutions in Transboundary Waters. Iran and its neighbors have several Transboundary
Rivers Basins such as Aras (with Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan), Atrak (with
Turkmenistan), Arvanad (Shat-Al-Arab) (with Iraq), Hirmand and Harirud (with
Afghanistan) and others. In this paper, after a brief survey on Transboundary Rivers of
Middle East Countries, it is presented the experiences of Transboundary Water
Management of Iran and its neighbors in several fields of implementations, challenges,
successful and new required process for implementation of IWRM in the Transboundary
Rivers.
Machine summary:
com Middle East Countries, it is presented the experiences of Transboundary Water Management of Iran and its neighbors in several fields of implementations, challenges, successful and new required process for implementation of IWRM in the Transboundary Rivers.
Development international relations have effected on transboundary basin management and caused international community needs following tools for solving conflicts in transboundary waters: a) compiling agreements, treaties and organizing methods of developments of all sides and states and relations between them (win-win approach); b) legalizing treaties according to defendable principles in international courts (legal approach instead of political approach); The main factors and issues which should be considered in transboundary water agreements and treaties are: Water quantity (volume and time duration), Water quality, IWRM (Integrated Water Resources Management), Political approaches, Hydropolitical and border rivers issues (Wolf, A.
Regards to water resources limitations, any developing program in Nile River riparian countries threats the vulnerable environment of this basin and therefore integrated water resources management could present solutions for decreasing environmental problems (Van Beek, E.
In North West of Iran, there are some other challenges in Aras Transboundary River between neighboring countries for water rights, river pollutions and flood control plans and IWRM could help decreasing tensions between riparian countries (UNECE (2011)).
Although some challenges exist between Iran and neighboring countries for management of Transboundary basins, but applying IWRM could help riparian countries to solve difficulties and prevent of new disputes in the region.