Publication Name

Environment and Security

Ferghana

Osh

Khujand

A vital natural resource: water

Central Asian context of water management

Agriculture is a mainstay of Central Asia’s economy. With

the economic crisis following independence it has become

even more important. Agriculture being almost entirely de-

pendent on irrigation, access to water is of strategic impor-

tance. Two major tributaries – the Naryn and the Kara-Darya

– both originating in Kyrgyzstan, join to form the Syr-Darya,

one of the two large rivers serving the Aral Sea basin and

the key water resource for the whole Ferghana valley. With

a length of 2,200 km it originates in the Tien Shan mountain

of Kyrgyzstan, passes through Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and

South Kazakhstan and flows into the Aral.

In principle the mountains of Central Asia are rich in water.

Countries may be considered to be suffering from high

water-scarcity when their annual per capita water supply is

less than 1,000 cubic metres. On this basis the situation in

Central Asia varies a great deal between up and downstream

countries, and between regions inside individual countries.

The annual natural internal renewable water resources per

capita are of the order of 700 cubic metres in Uzbekistan

and 200 cubic metres in Turkmenistan. The situation is

clearly critical. In contrast the figures for the other coun-

tries are 4,000 cubic metres in Kazakhstan, 11,000 cubic

metres in Tajikistan, and 10,000 cubic metres in Kyrgyzstan

(rounded-up data from WRI, 1998: 305).

Hence, the water

crisis in Central Asia is currently

not a crisis of quantity

but of distribution and use

. Although Afghanistan, Tajikistan

and Kyrgyzstan are the countries furthest upstream in the

Aral Sea basin, water withdrawals for these three countries

totals 17%. The picture for downstream states (Uzbekistan,

Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan) is exactly the opposite.

Uzbekistan withdraws 52% of the total, followed by Turk-

menistan (20%) and Kazakhstan (10%).

The chart shows that water consumption is clearly not

balanced. Whereas irrigation was practised for over 2,000

years in the river basin, it was only under Soviet rule that

water was diverted from the river on a large scale thanks to

an extensive irrigation infrastructure comprising diversion

and storage dams, canals, distributaries and pumping sta-

tions, enabling irrigated cultivation of cotton, fodder, wheat,

fruit and vegetables.

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