Science diplomacy and trans-boundary water management. The Orontes River case

The Mediterranean Basin in general, and more specifically its southeastern part, is encountering rapid changes leading to huge water stress and the tiniest percentage of available drinking water per inhabitant in the world. Changes leading to water scarcity include growing population, with rates annually exceeding 2.8%, and excessive water demand for irrigation. Climate change exacerbates water droughts and risks. Overall national sovereignty, political, social and economic factors seem to be equally important to the scarcity of water resources, which may influence conflicts and violent clashes (“water riots”).This is the reason why water and hydro-diplomacy occupy a central space on the diplomatic agenda of the governments in the region, including Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, Egypt and Turkey. To guarantee the equitable use of water resources for the population of the countries involved, a major task of hydro-diplomacy is to overcome a number of challenges and critical thresholds by exploring all possible options for consensus building and by using reliable scientific evidence.Hydro-diplomacy, as applied in the case of the Orontes, builds partly on traditional bilateral approaches, taking account of power relations, partly on observing International Law and partly on pursuing new methods and tendencies based on the analyses of the actual water needs at national and local level, considering in particular the most vulnerable communities and enhancing prospects for social and economic development.The present publication is based, on one hand, on the results of the ICT project funded by the Italian Development Cooperation (Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation) through the University of Insubria, and on the other hand, on the data and accumulated experience of hydro-diplomacy efforts. It thus brings together two approaches: first a crisp analysis of the evolution in addressing the water challenges applying technological tools on basin management, and secondly, a pragmatic one, based on a case study dealing with water resources in the Middle East.