Publication Name

Environment and Security

Ferghana

Osh

Khujand

The Ferghana valley

The Ferghana valley is an intermountain depression

in Central Asia, between the mountain systems of the

Tien-Shan in the north and the Gissar-Alai in the south.

The valley is approximately 300 km long and up to 70

km wide, forming an area of 22,000 sq km. Its position

makes it a separate geographic zone.

Although the valley forms a single, continuous geographic

unit, it is politically very divided. At present it encom-

passes three provinces of Kyrgyzstan – Osh and Jalal-

Abad, and the recently created Batken – three provinces

of Uzbekistan – Andijan, Ferghana and Namangan in the

centre – and the Sogd (formerly Leninabad) Province in

Tajikistan, at the south-western end of the Valley.

When the Russian Empire absorbed the valley in 1874,

it remained a single administrative unit, its territory

staying much as it had been under the Kokand Khanate.

Ethnic divisions were not the primary means of demarca-

tion. The 1917 revolution and the subsequent formation

of the USSR led to considerable changes in Central Asia.

In 1924 new administrative borders were introduced

dividing the region, creating “national” republics that

contained large populations of non-titular nationalities:

Uzbeks in Kyrgyzstan, Tajiks in Uzbekistan and so forth.

When these populations existed in large enough numbers

outside their own “national” republics, they won some

degree of autonomy. With the collapse of the Soviet

Union, the largely administrative dividing lines became

international borders.

The Ferghana valley forms the backbone of agriculture

in Central Asia. Some 45% of the irrigation areas of the

Syr-Darya basin are located in the valley.

Source: Goudie, 1996.

Results to date suggest that we can identify three main groups of is-

sues as relevant to environmental and security issues in the region:

access to and quality of natural resources (primarily water

and land, but also forest and more generally biodiversity

resources);

existing or potential pollution from industrial facili-

ties, hazardous and radioactive waste sites; and

cross-cutting issues suchasnatural disasters, climate

change, pubic health, environmental governance,

public participation and access to information.

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