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A Dying Aral Sea Gives Rise To Increased Tensions In The Region
September 29th, 2009
Via Window on Eurasia, a report that demise of the Aral Sea, the loss of which is already having an adverse effect on two-thirds of the 50 million people in Central Asia, is rapidly increasing tensions in the capitals of the five countries of the region and could spark new and larger military conflicts among […]
Read more »Central Asian Leaders Clash Over Water At Aral Sea Summit
April 30th, 2009
Via Eurasia.net disappointing (but not unexpected) news that a summit on the future of the shrinking Aral Sea ended without making any tangible progress on resuscitating the endangered sea. In fact, if anything, the meeting succeeded only in stoking acrimony among participants on the water-use issue. As the article notes: “…The presidents of the five […]
Read more »Central Asia: Creation of A Downstream Water-Energy Bloc
April 12th, 2009
Via Windows on Eurasia, an interesting report on the geopolitics behind the death of the Aral Sea and the emergence of “the youngest desert in the world, the Aralkum†which, as the article notes, are causing the countries around it to be increasingly drawn into serious conflicts over ever scarcer water resources. “…as a result […]
Read more »Central Asia Water Wars: Turkmenistan To Join Kazakhstan & Uzbekistan Vs. Kyrgyzstan & Tajikistan
April 12th, 2009
Via The Foreign Policy Association, a report that – in advance of the International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea meeting in Almaty on April 28 – Uzbekistan’s President, Islam Karimov, has been busy convincing Turkmenistan’s President, Gurbangly Berdymukhamedov, to ally with the downstream Central Asian states against the upstream ones. As the article notes: […]
Read more »Central Asian Water & An Aral Proverb: “In Every Drop Of Water There Is A Grain of Gold”
April 4th, 2009
In the latest SAISPHERE 2008, John Daly details more about the most severe conundrum facing Central Asian nations: water. As the report notes: The implosion of the U.S.S.R. in December 1991 sundered a country of 15 constituent republics into 15 new nations, which were immediately faced with the consequences of the dissolution of an economically […]
Read more »Hydro-Solidarity and Transboundary River Issues in Central Asia & The Middle East
March 20th, 2009
Via Terra Daily, an interesting look at three of the most challenging regions managing trans-boundary river issues and the chance for “hydro-solidarity” to overcome rising tensions in the Middle East and former Soviet Central Asia, both water-deprived regions with rapidly growing populations along with rising agricultural, industrial and energy requirements. As the article notes: “…Three […]
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