The PRP will study governance of the Rio Grande/Río Bravo (United States and Mexico) and Euphrates-Tigris (Turkey, Syria and Iraq) river basins. Both river systems are drought prone and likely to face water shortages as a result of climate change and reservoir sedimentation. We seek answers to two questions:
How is water shared among stakeholders in normal and drought years? Do current arrangements for water sharing support economic and environmental sustainability of basin populations?
If not, how do water managers adjust existing water sharing agreements to changing environmental, hydrological and demographic conditions in the basins? In the case of the Rio Grande, we will study how 1906 and 1944 bi-national water treaties were amended over 300 times to cope with changing hydrological and environmental conditions (the Minute system). In the case of the Euphrates-Tigris we will review how the emergence of a non-state actor (ISIS) and its control of strategic water infrastructure compels the stakeholders in the basin to search for new mechanisms for sustainable management of the basins.
Based on this work, PRP members will submit recommendations for more direct consideration of economic and environmental sustainability in basin governance.
The PRP will be led by Aysegül Kibaroglu (Professor, MEF University, Istanbul) and Jurgen Schmandt (Professor emeritus, LBJ School and Distinguished Fellow, Houston Advanced Research Center). Professor Kibaroglu will be in residence at the LBJ School at the start of the fall semester and during the spring term 2016. Work by the PRP will contribute to an ongoing ten-river project on “Sustainability of Engineered Rivers in Arid Lands” (SERIDAS), see http://www.harc.edu/work/SERIDAS.