The Sultanate of Oman is holding a strategically important position at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. The population of Oman is 4.43 million (2016).

Challenges in Oman’s water sector are numerous.[1] Some of the major ones are: water shortages; energy-intensive desalination; high water consumption in the domestic sector; unsustainable groundwater use in the agricultural sector; misdirected subsidies; and the lack of appreciation of integrated water resources management (IWRM) principles by decision makers.

What makes this particularly painful for that residents of Khuzestan is that the dams on the Karun are not only used for generating energy and irrigating agricultural land, they are also used to channel water via tunnels to other provinces, notably Isfahan in central Iran, which is politically more power. Many residents in Khuzestan feel that their water is being stolen.

While the annual yield of the Zayandehroud River has been significantly increased as a result of water transfers in the past decade

By 2002, the marshes had shrunk to 1,600km2 or 14% of their size in 1970s. Conditions in 2002 are considered to be the lower limit of the marshlands’ extent

In 2016, Fanack, Land Life Company (LLC) and the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) initiated a pilot project to bring the innovative COCOON planting technology to Palestine.

For many years, negotiations between Turkey and Syria over the Orontes or Asi River were linked to issues concerning the Euphrates and Tigris rivers shared between Turkey, Syria and Iraq, and progress of the former was dependent on progress of the latter

The length of the river is open to discussion. Depending on the source consulted, this ranges from 248km to 556km. Rainfall in the basin is about 644mm annually. The average temperature is around 16°C. The climate is semi-arid to arid in Lebanon, with annual rainfall of about 400mm

The annual amount of water used in Syria is about 15BCM. This comes from the Euphrates (50 per cent) and the Asi River basins (20 per cent). Of the water usage from the Asi River, 2,230MCM are used for irrigation, 320MCM for domestic purposes and 270MCM for industrial purposes. The total amount of water withdrawn from the Asi River is 2,730MCM

Turkey-Syria Relations were affected throughout the Cold War era and into the 1990s. The water issue became a foreign relations matter once again when both countries began using the waters of the Euphrates-Tigris basin in the 1960s and building irrigation and energy-related projects.