AGENTS OF CHANGE YOUTH FELLOWSHIP - Managing Water Scarcity in an Age of Climate Change:

and the local average in its arid southeastern Up until the 1970s, the main challenge in the parts, where the Euphrates and Tigris originate, basin was flooding, and the relative abundance could be even lower. [...] Indeed, some commentators have and Iraq, with the backing of the Arab League, argued that this hydro-geographic advantage campaigned to stop the construction of Birecik elevates Turkey to the status of a hegemon.25 Dam in Turkey.19 The three countries also have fundamental In the 2000s, there was a brief period of en- disagreements over applying the international hanced dialogue and attempts for b. [...] Water allocations should not be bound by pre-set and inflexible quotas or minimum requirements, but instead tied to the hy- drologic conditions of the rivers and chang- Managing Scarcity in the Euphrates-Tigris River Basin in the Age of Page 6 Climate Change: The Euphrates-Tigris River Basin ing demands of the countries. [...] The For a long time, data in the basin has been committee would also identify the water treated as a strategic asset to use as leverage needs of the basin’s ecosystems and endan- in negotiations, instead of as an essential ele- gered species and monitor the water levels ment of collaboration and sound decision-mak- throughout the basin to make sure all water ing. [...] be responsible for translating the TSC’s annual drought tier and water availability The data needs to be freely available not only projections into annual water allocations and to these governments, but also to the trilateral Managing Scarcity in the Euphrates-Tigris River Basin in the Age of Page 8 Climate Change: The Euphrates-Tigris River Basin committees and the public in order to encourage Co.