Water draws special interest in research because it is the essence of life. Attention has grown in this subject, perhaps in anxiety about the future of water in our present time due to increased competition for its demand; whether within one country or between countries that share it. Studying such a big and complex subject, and attempting to contain it in an individual study is not an easy task. In such a case, rigorous conciseness in the proposal should be taken into account, and making use of continuous references and sources of information clear throughout. Our colleague, Prof. Dr. Natheer Abbas al-Ansari, has undertaken to provide a thesis in the subject of the specific policies on water resources in Iraq. In an attempt to provide a vast amount of information and reference to a publication this paper in its own right will be one of the most prestigious references that researchers can return to when dealing with Iraq’s water conditions.
The first three chapters provide a general description of Iraq’s influencing geographical elements the Iraq in the composition of its inland water sources. Chapter 4 concentrates solely on Iraq’s water resources, the overall surface and groundwater, storage projects and regulatory operating systems of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Whereas Chapter 5 presents the challenges facing uncontrollable aspects to the water planning schemes; such as climate changes, problems of international waters with the neighbouring countries, internal challenges such as increased demand, predicted tides, lack of municipal water and sewage processing systems in addition to the challenges caused by the deterioration of water quality in southern Iraq and the inability to fully revive the marsh area.
The author attributes Chapter 6 of the study that addresses the subject of water policy in Iraq, under the title the water crisis due to a number of reasons. The reasons for the crisis includes the steady increase of the population, analysing nutrition and security policies, an increase in consumption as a result of economic growth, the progress in consumption patterns due to city migration, in addition to the unstable political conditions and its mismanagement. This chapter discusses agreements signed by Iraq with cooperating states regarding the waters of the Tigris, Euphrates and t Shatt al-Arab, which portray Iraq’s unfair shares of waters. The chapter proposes assigning a pressurising and neutral third-party, harnessing the common interests of trade exchange in order to reach a water agreement.
The study includes numeric data of changing elements over time. The study may be a strategic study of water resources, as lands accomplished by the official authorities in Iraq during the period 2012-2014 has contributed to updated statistics. Additionally, the study has referenced information on some sources without examination thus time and sources of such data should be noted.
The study takes a glance at the reality of the water situation in Iraq for those who are interested in learning the country’s available water resources without discussing water management that requires the analysis of water demand components, majorly represented in agricultural terms. Therefore, we find the irrigation references in the study represented in regulatory and dam projects as operational systems of water resources only and does not include irrigation and land retrieval projects as included in the strategic plan for the study, which will essentially require large-scale changes in policies and regulations and current legislation, to maintain the sustainability of agricultural activity – according to data resources of future water.
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