| Summary/Abstract |
This paper advocates using environmental data as a basis for cross-border entities to work toward integrated watershed management and discusses lessons learned through involving stakeholders in this process. Based on our experience with water and wastewater issues in the Middle East, we have adapted an integrated watershed management approach in response to local challenges such as underdeveloped infrastructure, asymmetric institutional capacities and political conflict. At present, our project work provides decentralized (bottom-up) solutions and, in doing so, develops stakeholder networks that can effect integrated watershed management in the long term. The solution is two-fold — to create a data platform that will serve as an analytical tool to guide water management decisions and, simultaneously, to create a stakeholder forum for cultivating ongoing cross-border relationships.
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