Mehmet Kucukmehmetoglu

International water resources allocation and conflicts: the case of the Euphrates and Tigris

This paper presents a linear programming model that allocates the waters of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers to irrigation, urban consumption, and on-stream hydroelectricity production in the three riparian countries (Turkey, Syria, and Iraq), by maximizing the aggregate net benefits from water uses while accounting for water-conveyance costs. The model represents, in network form, the system made of the two rivers and their various consumption, supply, and transshipment nodes, and accounts for evaporation and return flows. The constraints include water-conservation balances and maximum and minimum water consumption. The model is used to assess the economic consequences of various cooperation and noncooperation strategies that may be adopted by the riparian countries. Cooperative game-theory concepts (core and Shapley value) are used to identify stable water allocations, under which all three countries find it beneficial to cooperate. The results suggest that an allocation of the total benefits exists, under various scenarios of future energy prices and agricultural productivities, that makes this global cooperation attractive to all countries. Various research extensions are outlined.

TRANSBOUNDARY WATER RESOURCES ALLOCATION UNDER VARIOUS PARAMETRIC CONDITIONS: THE CASE OF THE EUPHRATES & TIGRIS RIVER BASIN

The literature on transboundary water resources allocation modelling is still short on encompassing and analyzing complex geographic multiparty nature of basins. This study elaborates the Inter Temporal Euphrates and Tigris River Basin Model (ITETRBM), which is a linear programming based transboundary water resources allocation model maximizing net economic benefit from allocation of scarce water resources to energy generation, urban, and agricultural uses. The elaborations can be categorized in two directions: First, agricultural and urban demand nodes are spatially identified with their relative elevations and distances to water resources supplies (dams, reservoirs, and lakes). Digital elevation model (DEM) database are intensely processed in geographic information system (GIS) environment. Second, the agricultural irrigable lands are restructured into a pixel based decision making units (DMUs) in order to be able to see the spatial extent of optimally irrigated land, and then optimization program is converted from linear programming (LP) to a mixed integer programming (MIP). The model applications are designed to cover a series of sensitivity analyses encompassing the various transboundary management, energy and agricultural use value, and transportation cost scenarios over the optimal uses of the Euphrates and Tigris Basin (ETRB) resources. The model results are visually presented via GIS in order to show the transboundary upstream and downstream spatial impacts of these selected parameters. The findings are i) system parameters significantly alter the spatial extent of water resources allocation in the ETRB, and ii) the magnitudes of the parameters also explains the tradeoffs between agriculture and energy sectors as much as upstream and downstream water uses of countries.