Search Results (8)

Iraq has faced escalating water scarcity over the past two decades, driven by climate change, upstream water withdrawals, and prolonged economic instability. These factors have caused deterioration in irrigation systems, inefficient water distribution, and growing social unrest. As per capita water availability falls below critical levels, Iraq is entering a period of acute water stress. This escalating water scarcity directly impacts water and food security, public health, and economic stability. This study aims to develop a general framework combining decision support systems (DSSs) with Integrated Comprehensive Water Management Strategies (ICWMSs) to support water planning, allocation, and response to ongoing water scarcity and reductions in Iraq. Implementing such a system is essential for Iraq to alleviate its continuing severe situation and adequately tackle its worsening water scarcity that has intensified over the years. This integrated approach is fundamental for enhancing planning efficiency, improving operational performance and monitoring, optimizing water allocation, and guiding informed policy decisions under scarcity and uncertainty. The current study highlights various international case studies that show that DSSs integrate real-time data, artificial intelligence, and advanced modeling to provide actionable policies for water management. Implementing such a framework is crucial for Iraq to mitigate this critical situation and effectively address the escalating water scarcity. Furthermore, Iraq’s water management system requires modifications considering present and expected future challenges. This study analyzes the inflows of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers from 1933 to 2022, revealing significant reductions in water flow: a 31% decrease in the Tigris and a 49.5% decline in the Euphrates by 2021. This study highlights the future 7–20% water deficit between 2020 and 2035. Furthermore, this study introduces a flexible, tool-based framework supported by a DSS with the DPSIR model (Driving Forces, Pressures, State, Impacts, and Responses) designed to address and reduce the gap between water availability and increasing demand. This approach proposes a multi-hazard risk matrix to identify and prioritize strategic risks facing Iraq’s water sector. This matrix links each hazard with appropriate DSS-based response measures and supports scenario planning under the ICWMS framework. The proposed framework integrates hydro-meteorological data analysis with hydrological simulation models and long-term investment strategies. It also emphasizes the development of institutional frameworks, the promotion of water diplomacy, and the establishment of transboundary water allocation and operational policy agreements. Efforts to enhance national security and regional stability among riparian countries complement these actions to tackle water scarcity effectively. Simultaneously, this framework offers a practical guideline for water managers to adopt the best management policies without bias or discrimination between stakeholders. By addressing the combined impacts of anthropogenic and climate change, the proposed framework aims to ensure rational water allocation, enhance resilience, and secure Iraq’s water strategies, ensuring sustainability for future generations. Full article

The management of transboundary aquifers across the Americas faces significant challenges, especially as climate change and population growth intensify groundwater stress. Groundwater use has increased to support domestic, industrial, and agricultural demands but has been extracted through unregulated withdrawals, leading to the severe degradation of aquifer health and transboundary frictions. This study focuses on how hydro-diplomacy can accelerate the adaptive governance of shared groundwater resources in three key regions: Canada–USA, USA–Mexico, and Mexico–Guatemala–Belize. We utilized a mixed methodology by integrating a transect approach, borrowed from ecology, into the field of geopolitics. To compare the hydro-diplomatic relations and groundwater governance across a continental gradient in the Americas, we conducted a literature review and employed the TWINS conflict–cooperation matrix to evaluate governance frameworks and hydro-diplomatic interactions across time. Our findings demonstrate that hydro-diplomacy plays a pivotal role in expediting agreements, fostering transboundary data sharing, and supporting participatory governance models. In particular, the presence of supranational bodies such as the International Joint Commission (IJC) between Canada and the USA has been effective in maintaining long-term collaboration through social learning and technical cooperation. Meanwhile, in regions like Mexico–Guatemala–Belize, the absence of robust institutions has hindered progress, with limited financial and knowledge-sharing networks. This study highlights the need for improved cross-border cooperation mechanisms and the establishment of common monitoring protocols to better manage aquifer resources under the pressures of climate change. The results support the development of more adaptive transboundary groundwater management strategies aligned with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6.5.2 and call for broader geopolitical cooperation to address the complexities of groundwater governance. Full article

Hydrodiplomacy is the emerging framework where legal acts, based on technical data and information, aim to support commonly accepted solutions to water-related tensions among states with transboundary waters. In this research, hydrodiplomacy components in relation to (a) policy, (b) preventive, (c) cooperative, and (d) technical aspects are considered together with climate change, which is bound to destabilize the core element of hydrodiplomacy, i.e., water. The study area is composed of the five transboundary river basins of Greece. The coupling of all these different nature elements is conducted with the use of the AHP multicriteria method, and the results of a normalized output that quantifies water transboundary cooperation in the climate crisis era are given. Full article

Approximately 40% of the world’s population lives in transboundary river and lake basins, accounting for an estimated 60% of global freshwater flow. These shared water resources support the livelihoods of more than 3 billion people. Today, with the decrease in the amount of water in the world, the dispute over transboundary waters has increased. In this research, using library studies (including articles, books, reliable reports from the United Nations and other relevant organizations, etc.), problems of the most important transboundary waters have been investigated. Because transboundary water problems are widespread all over the world, solutions by researchers, relevant organizations such as UN sub-organizations, and politicians have been suggested. In this research, emphasizing the cases of diplomacy and hydro-hegemony, risk, water–energy–food nexus, and 5P, this issue is investigated. Finally, by examining the most important problems of transboundary waters all over the world, as well as the most critical cases and using successful experiences in the world in solving transboundary water crises, peaceful proposals to solve such problems and reach sustainable solutions in order to reach the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been proposed depending on the regional and country conditions of each of these basins. Full article

Governing and managing the allocation and use of freshwater has always been a complex and fraught undertaking. The challenges to effective and equitable management have been exacerbated by rising pressures on supplies caused by such drivers as population growth, urbanization and climate change. Moreover, vast quantities of water straddle international and other boundaries—four-fifths of the world’s largest river basins and hundreds of aquifers span such borders. This further complicates management and governance, which is subject to disparate legal, political, administrative, financial, cultural and diplomatic conditions. Recognition in the literature and in practice of ‘transboundariness’ dates to the 1970s and has grown since. The authors trace the evolution of transboundary water scholarship and identify five framings used in transboundary water governance and management: conflict and cooperation; hydropolitics; hydrodiplomacy; scale; and disciplinary approaches. Transboundary water management initiatives can be viewed through three broad strands: interventions, advancements in governance strategies and democratization of data and information for strengthening science–policy interaction. The authors close with a discussion of future directions for transboundary water governance and management, emphasizing the need for additional research on how to deal with climate-related and other mounting challenges. Full article

This paper investigates the collaborative and benefit-sharing approaches to conflict management in the management of cross-border water resources for the sustainable development of the Kabul River Basin riparian states of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The study offers an understanding of water management strategies concerning peace, progress and development, and sustainability. Using an interpretative social science approach, this paper investigates the impacts of water scarcity and stress, hydro-politics, water diplomacy, and water issues among co-riparian countries. It also investigates how cross-border river management impacts river water sustainability and sustainable cross-border water management strategies. The paper finds that the most significant factor in resolving and managing cross-border water disputes is to employ a collective and combined method of water management based on cooperation and benefit-sharing. This is in addition to providing an immediate cost-effective benefit of improving water supply, hydroelectric generation, and agricultural production, as well as future communal and monetary benefits for the public who reside and work the river basin. The paper proposes establishing a combined cross-border basin authority for both Afghanistan and Pakistan in order to effectively realize the benefits of the Kabul River Basin. Full article

Large river floods threaten intensively used urban areas across the world. Projections of IPCC expect such risks to increase in the future. To deal with flood risk along rivers water can be retained upstream at places where less damage is caused and more vulnerable land (downstream) can be adapted to the flood risk (resilient cities). This catchment-oriented approach to flood risk management implies that upstream and downstream parties need to agree on where to store and where to adapt to floods. However, this approach implies that many diverse stakeholders (such as mayors, spatial planners, homeowners, etc.) enter the decision-making process, which influences efficiency of the measure selection. Measures in a catchment of a river are often related and influence each other—what happens upstream can have substantial effects downstream. In particular, when rivers cross administrative or national boundaries, these upstream-downstream effects become an issue of hydro-diplomacy. Upstream is usually not motivated to implement measures from which mostly only downstream profits. Therefore, negotiation is necessary to find agreement between upstream and downstream and to implement the most effective and efficient measure. The negotiation becomes more complicated if multiple upstream and downstream parties are involved. In this contribution, a role-played game that tries to better understand the dynamics of negotiations in multiple upstream-downstream relationships is introduced. The game will be played with real stakeholders (mayors and river basin managers) and the dynamics of negotiation will be explored in different scenarios based on the Cultural Theory of Risk. This way, the game allows to compare effectiveness of negotiation in different scenarios. Beside the different institutional settings, the players’ level of flood risk aversion will be tested. The aim is to demonstrate (play) the game during the session focused on games and experiments. The attendees take on roles of mayors and will play one scenario of the game. The game shows how negotiations may (and indeed should from an economic point of view) lead to a Pareto-improving situation, making some players better off without worsening a situation of any other player. The demonstration presents the setup of the game and leads to discussion about results of the negotiations. Full article

This paper examines the transboundary water resources conflict resolution mechanisms. Various academic fields have provided conflict resolution mechanisms that could be used to analyse transboundary water conflicts. These mechanisms include social planner, water market, game theory, static and dynamic systems engineering models, and negotiation analyses. These mechanisms share some common characteristic features. This similarity has led to a general belief that these mechanisms are competitive substitutes. However, closer examination by this research reveals that these mechanisms have more complementarity than similarity. This complementarity permits researchers and practitioners to combine any two or more of them to develop more comprehensive mechanisms with stronger analytical capacity to analyse the different elements of the process of transboundary water conflict resolution. Full article