1. Introduction

This chapter mostly deals with the two concepts of “territory” and “territorial cooperation of water”. The chapter suggests some hypotheses on the role of shared water resources in strengthening cooperation between two or more beneficiary territories. The man-made water currents like qanat which are dependent on periodic maintenance can step up interaction and cooperation between different territories and can blunt the territorial identity, in case they flow across two or several territories and benefit all of them. In other words, where a man-made stream which needs maintenance to keep running crosses two or several territorial borders, the territorial borders may become more uncertain which encourages more cooperation across the borders, and accordingly more cooperation can make the borders vaguer and this cycle continues.

According to this chapter, water is one of the vital resources that a community within its territory needs to live on. But in many cases, neither surface streams nor groundwater are confined within the territory borders as are the other resources such as soil, manpower, tools, infrastructures, etc. Therefore the neighboring territories have to establish a cooperative relationship to ensure their sustainable access to their shared water, which can be called territorial water cooperation.