ETIC has strengthened its position and built confidence and trust within the international community and among the riparian officials. During the years 2005, 2006 and 2007 ETIC Founders and their invited riparian officials participated in international meetings in India, Italy Sweden, Japan, Jordan, Geneva and Mexico.
ETIC organized in 2006 a training program on dam safety in Istanbul, Turkey in collaboration with UNESCO for practitioners from Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey.
Ministerial delegations from Iraq, Syria, and Turkey attended special meetings held by ETIC at the 4th World Water Forum in Mexico City in March 2006. Also in attendance at the ETIC meetings in Mexico included representatives from UNESCO Headquarters and field offices from Amman, Cairo, and Iran, UNESCO-IHE Institute of Water Resources in the Netherlands, Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Department of State, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Swedish International Development Agency, Universities Partnership on Transboundary Waters, and United Nations University.
ETIC organized a stakeholder workshop and conference in Istanbul, Turkey in September 2007 on Technical Cooperation for Regional Development in the Euphrates and Tigris Region to review its strategy and work out projects for implementation. ETIC prospects were discussed and collaboration in ETIC activities by UNDP, SIWI, FAO and ADI-BRI were explored with the representatives who participated in the workshop.
The discussions held between ETIC founders and SIWI colleagues in Saltsjöbaden on the Project of Advancing ETIC Institutionally helped ETIC underpin its established entity with organizational structure. It also helped ETIC to proceed sustainably to accomplish its overall goal which is improving the quality of life for people in rural and urban communities in the Euphrates Tigris Region in harmony among the countries and nature.
During the year 2008, ETIC explored the prospects of collaboration with FAO, the Blue Revolution Initiative (BRI) and the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) in two workshops and a meeting held in Egypt, Sweden and Turkey.
ETIC signed memoranda of understandings for collaboration on implementing projects in the Euphrates Tigris region with the University of New Mexico (UNM) in the U.S; the American University of Beirut (AUB) in Lebanon; the Arab Center for the Studies of Arid Zones and Dry Lands (ACSAD) in Syria; IHP in Germany; Okan University in Turkey.
ETIC implemented (2009-2012) the activity “Collaborative Planning and Knowledge Development in the Tigris Euphrates Region” with funding an activity from USAID. The objectives of the activity were to foster collaboration and build confidence among practitioners from the riparian countries, establish a data inventory for the Euphrates Tigris region, harmonize it, organize capacity building courses and produce a clearinghouse. A working group comprising experts from Iraq, Syria and Turkey was formed through mobilizing riparian academic community and practitioners. The three riparian teams worked collaboratively, examined some publicly available data in each country from various sources for developing an inventory, identified the kinds of data available, listed them and catalogued them with cross-referencing. The data inventory was established for the administrative boundaries where the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers pass. The teams established an electronic network for maintaining contact which they used to conduct a comparative analysis of data sets according to the methods used to collect those data and the software used to express them into graphs and tables.
ETIC implemented numerous capacity building programs for professionals, practitioners and government officials from Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey on dam safety, river hydraulics hydrology, and hydro politics, conflict management and on Geographic Information System and on Information Technology related trans-boundary water. Three capacity building programs implemented (2009-2011) in Aleppo, Syria in collaboration with SIWI on subjects related to the Euphrates Tigris region for professionals and public officials from Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey between 2011-2014.
In 2015 ETIC conducted negotiations with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to prepare a project proposal “Support Cooperation on Agricultural Water Resource Management in the Lower Mesopotamia” for funding by the Italian government.
Euphrates Tigris Initiative for Cooperation (ETIC) 