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WATER POLITICS

Via The Guardian, an interesting look at the issue of water scarcity in the deserts of central Asia.  As the article notes:

“…Water is a precious resource in the desert lands of Central Asia, where only the Aral Sea and a few rivers must provide enough water for the region’s 60 million people. But while the desiccation of the Aral Sea has been well documented, very little attention has been focused on the ecological destruction of the sea’s two dependent rivers, the Syr Darya and the Amu Darya.

These two rivers, which enclose the area known to the ancients as “Transoxiana,” have nurtured 4,000 years of civilization, from the invading Mongol armies of Genghis Khan to the flourishing caravanserai on the Silk Road, to Soviet collective farms. These waterways provided more than enough water to support agriculture and trade for centuries. But since the disastrous introduction of Soviet irrigation systems, designed for the intense cultivation of cotton, began 40 years ago, the water has just about disappeared from Uzbek land.

…Unesco estimates that 87% of Uzbekistan’s territory is in a state of severe water shortage, ranking just above Somalia. Water scarcity is the direct result of decades of mismanagement of the region’s waterways, which began with Soviet industrial farming schemes. However, environmental degradation has continued at an alarming pace post-independence, as the five Central Asian republics have continued inefficient Soviet water policies, and persist in using the faulty infrastructure of the irrigation systems, which environmental groups say lose between 50% and 90% of available water resources. “The infrastructure is completely old-fashioned and poorly maintained,” said Dr. Daniel Zimmer, executive director of the World Water Council.

Leaky infrastructure is not the only reason for water scarcity in Central Asia. Because the Soviet Union managed water policy from a regional level, the independence of the five former Soviet republics resulted in the scattering of dams, canals, and hydroelectric plants. As a result, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are now water-rich nations, and take advantage of their downstream position by using hydroelectric plants and dams as bargaining chips in negotiations with other states. Meanwhile, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan periodically suffer from water shortages, as they are located furthest from the rivers’ source, and are utterly dependent on the goodwill of the upstream countries.

“The most difficult issue is sharing water well,” said Dr. Zimmer. “As soon as one of the upstream countries wants to build dams, it triggers tensions with the downstream countries.” Tensions periodically erupt between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, as Kyrgyzstan resents having to pay the £12.5m annual bill ($25m US) to maintain the Toktogul hydroelectric plant. In retaliation, Uzbekistan has shut down all transport roads leading to the Kyrgyz border, and has mobilized troops in the Ferghana Valley, a region shared by both nations.

Other nations resent Uzbekistan’s near-monopoly on water resources. “Tajikistan has a water crisis as well,” insists Firuza Abdurakhimova, the director of the Tajik Eco-NGO Nature Protection Team. Though containing only 20% of Central Asia’s water sources, Uzbekistan consumes up to 90% of regional consumption – the overwhelming proportion sent to cultivate the cotton fields, which still dominate the economy. Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan all rank higher than Uzbekistan in terms of severe water stress, yet these arid nations must share between 10-20% of all water resources in Central Asia. “We recognise that more work needs to be done at the trans-boundary level” to share water more equitably, said a spokesman for the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

A regional agreement on water distribution does not look likely in the near future. All five Central Asian states agreed to continue the old Soviet system of water management, which depended heavily on centralised management of the irrigation systems, shortly after independence. From 1998 until 2003, annual Syr Darya Framework Agreements were negotiated throughout the region, with each state vowing to share water resources fairly. These, and a bevy of other water agreements signed in the late 1990s, were never followed. “The problem with many of these water agreements was that they were non-binding,” said Dr Richard Taylor, a geographer from University College London with a specialisation in water resource management. “Trans-boundary issues will be amplified in future, as more people compete for resources,” he predicts.

Until an agreement is reached – or a new source of water is discovered – Uzbeks will have to subsist on what little water is available, and manage their available resources through local water user agreements, a process similar to those used on collectivised farms. “People are very concerned about the shortages of hot water in the cities and the absences of drinking water in villages,” said Umarova. “We find this all very disturbing.”