Dr. Kevin Rosner, Senior Fellow at the Strauss Center and Director of Research at the Institute for Natural Resources and Sustainable Development at the University of Ottawa, Canada, published a new paper titled, Water and Electric Power in Iraq and Syria: Conflict and Fragility Implications for the Future. This paper is published as part of the Strauss Center’s program on Middle East Water, Energy, and Security, led by State Fragility Initiative Director Ashley Moran.

The Strauss Center’s program explores the nexus of security and development in the Middle East. The pilot study in Rosner’s paper explores the exact scope and location of water and energy resource stress in Iraq and Syria, the implications for livelihood and state security, and the required elements for stability in the face of growing resource stress. It focuses on Iraq and Syria as two countries that are central to water, energy, and conflict dynamics in the region.

Rosner promotes an integrated security framework applied to water and electric power resources. The action-oriented and solution-driven study provides recommendations for stability and recovery in these sectors including: conducting assessments of the water and power systems in both countries; systemizing data acquisition on critical facilities; establishing policies to ensure equitable distribution of and access to these resources in the future; and creating a commission to evaluate lessons learned from the Iraq reconstruction for application in a future Syrian post-conflict context.

The report is available in its entirety here. More information about the Strauss Center’s Middle East program is available here.