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The blog of the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program
  • Water Causing Tension in Central Asia

    December 7, 2007 By Rachel Weisshaar
    “The water crisis in Central Asia is due to the way water has been allocated and managed; it is not a crisis of quantity but of distribution,” asserts Jeremy Allouche, a visiting fellow at the MIT Center for International Studies, in “The governance of Central Asian waters: national interests versus regional cooperation,” available in the latest issue of the UN Institute for Disarmament Research’s Disarmament Forum.

    The shrinking of the Aral Sea, which began in the 1960s, first drew international attention to the region’s water issues. The Aral Sea has been an ecological disaster, but Central Asia now has another, equally serious hydrological problem: how to divide the region’s limited water among competing countries that need it for irrigation, hydropower, and other uses. Kazakstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Krygystan have had largely hostile relations over water distribution since they achieved independence in 1992, and these tensions could boil over into violent conflict unless the countries can implement a functional regional water agreement.

    Allouche offers a concise, lucid overview of the challenges of the region’s post-independence water governance system, including analyses of how the water policies of Central Asia’s major players (which also include Afghanistan, China, and Russia) affect regional tensions over water.
    Topics: conflict, energy, foreign policy, water
    • http://www.blogger.com/profile/18337694112852162181 Geoff Dabelko

      Interesting piece – is it the case that predicted climate change impacts may challenge the distribution rather than quantity thesis? Given the importance of glacial melt for water supply in this region, there should be plenty of water in the short term. But after those glaciers have retreated dramatically in a few decades, will the quantity issue not be a fundamental challenge for Central Asia?

    • http://www.blogger.com/profile/03137903197690888741 google

      This comment has been removed by the author.

    • http://www.blogger.com/profile/03137903197690888741 Erika Weinthal

      Geoff raises an important, but still, largely overlooked issue – that is, the impact of climate change on water use and allocation in Central Asia. Given that the rivers in Central Asia are fed by glaciers in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan and in Tajikistan, climate change will most likely accelerate snowmelt, which would affect the seasonal flow. This will affect thousands of livelihoods downstream, as it could have an impact upon the current cropping patterns. The extensive focus on interstate conflict, however, is somewhat misguided, as it fails to take into account the potential for social unrest within the downstream states — that is, in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan where the economies (despite having tremendous sources of energy resources) are still highly dependent upon cotton farming, which underlies a system of social and political control. If these countries find themselves forced to restructure their entire economies so as to be able to deal with climate change, they may find themselves facing increased social unrest. Yet, by fundamentally restructuring the agricultural sector, the Central Asian states will be more likely to avoid both distribution and quantity problems.

    • http://www.blogger.com/profile/02124912903728296380 paul

      This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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