Identification of Transboundary Water Resources Management Issues From Hydropolitical Perspective (Case Study: Harirud River)

Common water resources have caused tensions as well as partnerships across the regional to international levels. Undoubtedly, identifying the factors influencing the management of such resources will be a prerequisite for bilateral or multilateral negotiations to resolve existing tensions and establish cooperation between stakeholders. Therefore, in this article, an attempt has been made to identify the effective parameters from a hydropolitical point of view with a comprehensive look at the issues of transboundary water resources management and to categorize them in an innovative framework. The approach used to achieve this goal is the deep review of existing literature as well as the use of remote sensing to study different criteria. Harirud basin as one of the obvious examples of transboundary water issues is involved in specific challenges between the three countries and may be a suitable choice for covering different factors in this field. The innovative framework based on four areas of political, economic, social and environmental has been presented as the main dimensions of hydropolitics and prioritized based on the opinion of experts. The results show that in order to reach a comprehensive and lasting agreement, the greatest focus should be on the political and economic areas. In this regard, paying attention to the sub-criteria of geographical location, management of available water resources, stability of political sovereignty, water management, food security, hydrology of the basin, water and energy exchanges, water trade and conflict of strategic interests will have the greatest impact on the negotiation process.