The role of epistemic communities in offering new cooperation frameworks in the Euphrates-Tigris Rivers system.

• Author: Kibaroglu, Aysegul
• Position: REGIONAL ISSUES - Report

The Euphrates-Tigris region has faced significant political changes since the late 1990s. These changes can be attributed to improvements in bilateral relations, mainly in the security domain, between two of its major riparians, Turkey and Syria. In the meantime, another major riparian, Iraq, has lived through devastating war and occupation, which has had implications for regional water issues. These changes have brought new actors, involved or interested in the hydropolitics of the two-river basin, to the region.

This article will analyze the politics of water resources in the Euphrates-Tigris River basin, focusing on current developments. But first, an overview of past events is deemed necessary to evaluate, in the proper context, the current situation in the basin. Historical research has traced the opportunities for more interactions in the river basin with broader aims for socioeconomic development, in addition to the limited goal of watersharing.

In this respect, one significant development in the region is the Euphrates-Tigris Initiative for Cooperation (ETIC) established in May 2005 by a group of scholars and professionals from the three major riparian countries, (1) The overall goal of the initiative is to promote cooperation among the three riparians to achieve technical, social and economic development in the Euphrates-Tigris River basin. The composition and the role of ETIC remarkably fits the epistemic community theory and its role in institutional bargaining. Epistemic communities are a "network of professionals with recognized expertise and competence in a particular domain and an authoritative claim to policy-relevant knowledge within that domain or issue-area." (2) This article will introduce the origin, objectives and activities of ETIC within the epistemic community theory with particular references to new areas of cooperation in the basin.

EUPHRATES-TIGRIS RIVERS SYSTEM: POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY

The Euphrates-Tigris River basin comprises Iraq, Syria and Turkey as the major riparians. (3) The two greatest rivers of southwest Asia, the Euphrates and the Tigris, originate in a particular topographic and climatic zone and end up in quite a different one. The basin is characterized by high mountains to the north and to the west, and extensive lowlands in the south and in the east. The two rivers begin, scarcely 30 kilometers from each other, in a relatively cool and humid zone with rugged 3,000 meter-high mountains, and are visited by autumn and spring rains and winter snows. From there, the two rivers run separately onto a wide, flat, hot and poorly drained plain. In their middle courses, they diverge hundreds of kilometers apart, yet meet again near the end of their journey in the Shatt al-Arab, and discharge together into the Persian Gulf. The great alluvium-filled depression, Shatt al-Arab, and the combined area of the lakes and swamps have a length of 180 kilometers and constitute the combined delta of the Euphrates-Tigris River basin. (4)

We observe, in conformity with the expert judgments of geographers, that the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers are considered to form one single transboundary watercourse system. (5) They are linked not only by their natural course when merging at the Shatt-al-Arab, but also as a result of the man-made Tharthar Canal connection between the two rivers in Iraq. (6)

In the upstream region, the Euphrates and Tigris pass through a Mediterranean subtropical climate characterized by rainy winters and dry, warm summers. This climate prevails in southeastern Turkey, as well as in northern Syria and Iraq. However, the two rivers flow through semi-arid and arid regions within Syria and Iraq, since 60 percent of the Syrian territory receives less than 250 millimeters of precipitation while 70 percent of Iraq is subject to 400 millimeters per year. Another important climatic feature in the Euphrates-Tigris River basin is the high temperature resulting in high evaporation. Heavy evaporation also reinforces water salination and water loss in major reservoirs like the Keban and Ataturk Dams in Turkey, the Assad Reservoir or Tabqa Dam in Syria, and Lake Habbaniya and the Tharthar Canal in Iraq. (7)

The discharge, or flow, of the Euphrates and Tigris is still a matter of dispute among scholars and experts. This is not only because the flow patterns have shown great deviations, which impede the computation of a representative average discharge value, but the rapid development on both rivers, which has disrupted the natural flow, has also created difficulties for hydrologists to determine the discharge values. (8) In addition to this, the lack of mutual trust and confidence inhibits the riparians of the basin from releasing the necessary data and information relevant to rainfall and runoff. Analysts have concluded that the annual mean flow of the Euphrates, 32 billion cubic meters per year, is a valid value. (9) Approximately 90 percent of the mean flow of the Euphrates is contributed by Turkey; the remaining 10 percent originates in Syria. (10) As for the Tigris and its tributaries, the average total discharge is determined to be 52 billion cubic meters per year. (11) Turkey contributes approximately 40 percent of the total annual flow, whereas Iraq and Iran contribute 51 percent, and 9 percent, respectively. (12)

It should be noted that the Euphrates and Tigris rivers have extremely high seasonal and multi-annual variance in their flow. (13) Further, the natural flows of both rivers passing from Turkey to Syria, and from Syria to Iraq, change due to irrigation and energy projects, which the riparians have already initiated. The rapidly increasing populations of these countries and the importance given to agricultural development and food production necessitate further utilization of these rivers. The major problem, however, arises from the fact that the projected water demands of the riparians surpass the actual amount of water that can be supplied by the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers. (14)

WATER POLITICS IN THE EUPHRATES-TIGRIS RIVER BASIN: AN HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

Harmonious Transboundary Water Relations (1920 to 1960)

In the first half of the 20th century, after the demise of the Ottoman Empire, new political entities such as the independent Republic of Turkey, Iraq (under British mandate), and Syria (under French mandate) emerged as the major riparians in the region. From the 1920s to the 1960s, Iraq, Syria and Turkey were all engaged in state consolidation efforts including, inter alia, the investigation, exploitation and management of natural resources, namely water and land resources. The new government institutions, established at the national level, investigated the development potential of water and land resources in each country, as well conducting preliminary hydrological surveys. (15)

At the transboundary level, harmonious water relations were observed in the Euphrates-Tigris basin, regulated through a series of historical, bilateral political treaties. None of the countries engaged in major development projects, which would have resulted in excessive consumptive utilization of the rivers. (16) The treaties signed between France, on behalf of Syria, and Turkey, and between Turkey and Iraq, had little significance as the riparians were utilizing small amounts of water and they did not need to rely on the treaties to resolve disputes. (17)

Competitive Transboundary Water Relations (1960 to 1980)

As the riparian states further consolidated in the decades between 1960 to 1980, they paid more focused attention to socioeconomic development, based on water and land resources. The central agencies designated the major river basins, with their recorded potential for water and land resources, for large-scale development projects. In this respect, the Euphrates and Tigris rivers were determined to be the backbone of water development. To illustrate, it was the vast development potential of both the Euphrates and Tigris rivers which, in the 1960s, led to the idea of harnessing the waters in a region where nearly one-fifth of Turkey's irrigable land could be found. In this context, Turkey implemented the Lower Euphrates Project to build a series of dams on the Euphrates to increase hydropower generation and expand irrigated agriculture. Later on, in the late 1970s, the Lower Euphrates Project evolved and expanded into a larger multi-sectoral development project called the Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP, its Turkish acronym), which includes 21 large dams, 19 hydropower plants and irrigation schemes extending to 1.7 million hectares of land. (18) The Euphrates and Tigris River basin accounts for 28.5 percent of the surface water supply in Turkey. (19)

The Euphrates River basin provides 65 percent of surface water supply in Syria, and contains 27 percent of overall land resources. (20) Therefore, when the Baath Party came to power in the early 1960s, Syria initiated the Euphrates Valley Project. The government set a number of objectives to be met by the project: irrigating an area as wide as 640,000 hectares, generating electric energy needed for urban use and industrial development, and regulating the flow of the Euphrates in order to prevent seasonal flooding. (21)

The main tributaries of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers constitute the entire fresh water supply in Iraq, which pioneered and built its first dam, the Euphrates Dam, in 1955-1956 to divert the water to the A1-Habbaniya Lake. The Samarra Dam on the Tigris, completed in 1954, protected Iraq from catastrophic floods. (22) The Baath Party, which came to power under Saddam Hussein's presidency in 1968, emphasized agricultural and irrigation projects in order to provide food security for the Iraqi people. Toward that end the "Revolutionary Plan" was developed. The Higher Agriculture Council, attached to the presidency, and the Soil and Land Reclamation Organization, attached to the Ministry of Irrigation...