Blue Peace: from idea to reality

Mismanagement of shared water resources may lead to political instability, increasing the vulnerability of the social, environmental, and economic sectors, developing violent conflicts, and ultimately undermining human security. Due to its significance, various efforts and studies have been conducted to address water conflicts. “Blue peace" is one of the novel approaches that has been proposed to manage water conflicts. The main goal of "blue peace" is to apply the potential of investing in shared water resources as a way to peacebuilding. The "blue peace" approach has recently been welcomed in West Asian countries for water conflicts management. Accordingly, a comprehensive understanding of the blue peace approach and its theoretical foundations is necessary to ensure the compatibility of these foundations with the conditions governing water subsystems and hydropolitical issues in the region. It has led to the formation of the present study. Accordingly, in this study, the application of this approach in international water relations and its place in water interactions in the Middle East has been investigated by using library resources and applying an analytical approach. The results reveal that the blue peace is a reductionist approach that does not pay attention to the hidden factors affecting the water conflicts and will not lead to effective dealing with these conflicts in general as well as water conflicts in the Middle East in particular.