Transboundary Water Management Improvements, the Way Forward in the Middle East; Case Study: Transboundary Water Management of Iran and Neighbors

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.