ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the water resource issues facing modern Mesopotamia, the new challenges facing the region, and strategies for moving toward more sustainable water management and use in order to reduce the risks of water-related violence. Even in a static world, conditions in the Middle East and in the core watersheds of modern Mesopotamia would continue to raise tensions over water resources. For water resources, key strategies include those that both improve the effective use of scarce surface and groundwater and expand nontraditional sources of supply, such as treated wastewater and improved stormwater capture. The Euphrates and Tigris rivers are the only renewable water resources of any note in the area, though some modest groundwater resources are also tapped in parts of the region. The region known as Mesopotamia—literally translated as "the land between rivers"—encompasses roughly the area of the Tigris and Euphrates river basins.
