Switzerland, Germany, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Austria, Liechtenstein, Belgium and Italy are nine European countries that closely and productively cooperate to protect the Rhine River from pollution, and monitor the quality and the density of its water flow to ensure its optimal utilization. The river covers an area of 200,000 square kilometers (124,274 square miles) and reaches 20 million people. This cooperation is carried out by several bodies, notably the International Commission for the Protection of the Rhine (ICPR), which was founded in 1953 by Switzerland, Germany, France, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. The ICPR also coordinates with the European Commission and operates according to the Convention on the Protection of the Rhine, which was signed by the member states on April 12, 1999.

These European countries constitute a model for peaceful and civilized cooperation, despite their ethnic diversity and linguistic differences as well as a long history of political disputes. This is the message that the Strategic Foresight Group’s (FSG) “Blue Peace in the Middle East” initiative seeks to convey to the countries of the Middle East. FSG therefore organized a trip to the Rhine between Germany and Switzerland, in which politicians, experts and reporters from Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia — including an Al-Monitor reporter — took part.

This visit took place Sept. 24-27, and was hosted by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs. The trip included visits to water-monitoring facilities along the Rhine in Germany and Switzerland as well as meetings with Swiss and German officials. The latter explained the operation mechanism of local and international committees for the protection of the Rhine — from upstream in Switzerland down to the estuary in the North Sea — to the visiting delegation, which brought together about 35 participants.

There is no doubt that this European experience in water and environmental cooperation is a great example to be followed in the Middle East and other regions. The interventions of European officials and experts impressed the participants, who expressed their desire and aspiration to repeat the same experience at home by establishing a regional council for water in the Middle East and promote cooperation among riparian states of the regional rivers — namely the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Cooperation ought to start from sharing information on the quantities of water flowing down, controlling water pollution, the flow rate, the prospects of floods and fair distribution of water.