Security to All: Allocating the Waters of Euphrates and Tigris

The highly contested and complex issue of transboundary water governance calls for rethinking fairness and equity in the allocation of water between sovereign nation-states. This paper provokes ideas about the problem of allocation and access as it is stated in the Earth System Governance Project. It starts out arguing that the problem of allocation in the Middle East is framed by both upstream and downstream countries through discourses of security based on national sovereignty. In a world where national borders define who gets what, each nation state prioritizes its own citizens and development goals over those of other nations. State-centric approaches also dominate the legal principles of water allocation. This paper argues, however, that a discursive transformation of the concept of security in water governance is taking place from state-centric to people-centric notion and that this change has begun to shape the perspectives on water allocation. By focusing on the Euphrates and Tigris River Basin, this paper explores the new perspectives on water allocation such as the single basin approach and benefit-sharing and analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of this change.