ABSTRACT
In many places in the Middle East, water scarcity is becoming a reality that is no longer be concealed behind reassuring political rhetoric. In south-eastern Turkey, the GAP project has started addressing the issue of user involvement. GAP, the Turkish abbreviation for the South-eastern Anatolia Project, started as a purely economic power generation project to build twenty-two dams and nineteen hydroelectric power plants on the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. In Egypt farmers are becoming more involved in the management of the Nile waters. The heavily autocratic and hierarchical system of water distribution is cantered on the powerful Ministry of Water Resources. Water distribution in Egypt takes place through a fairly straightforward and hierarchical system: all along the course of the Nile there are derivation canals which lead water east and west of the river to the fields. While Egypt tries to make its population aware of the growing threat of water scarcity, Jordan is facing a much more serious situation.
