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TRANSBOUNDARY WATER MANAGEMENTImage: Ikuru Kawajima/IWMILivelihoods in the region are vulnerable to water variabilityThe Aral Sea has been considered one of the world’s biggestenvironmental disasters. The lake, one of the largest in the worldin the 1960s, was nearly sapped dry by a Soviet plan to divert waterto irrigate vast cotton fields. The shrinking of the Aral Sea virtuallydestroyed the region’s fishing industry, an important ecosystem,left a legacy of pollution with health implications, and is believedto have led to more extreme weather.The 2,200 km Syr Darya is the longest river in Central Asia.It starts with the confluence of two tributaries in the Tien Shanmountains in Kyrgyzstan and flows downstream into the FerghanaValley in Uzbekistan. Within the Ferghana Valley, 33 tributariescontribute to the river flow that enters Tajikistan and fills theKairakkum Reservoir. Tajikistan lifts water from the reservoir toirrigate area farms. From the reservoir, the Syr Darya flows backinto Uzbekistan and across southern Kazakhstan before terminatingin the Aral Sea.Under the Soviet regime, crops were mainly grown in the downstreamplains, with livestock primarily raised in the upstreammountains. Although an extensive amount of water managementinfrastructure existed downstream, there was mainly large-scaleinfrastructure upstream on the main tributaries and very little onthe small transboundary tributaries. For example, only about halfa dozen tributaries have seasonal upstream dams, andthey are poorly maintained.In the Syr Darya basin, nearly 80 per cent of the waterwas lost due to infrastructure problems compared withan average of 60 per cent in developing countries,according to IWMI research published in 2004.Water user associations (WUAs)consisting primarilyof farmers were established in the Kyrgyz part ofthe two basins in the late 1990s as part of a WorldBank-financed project. Within the two basins IWMIstarted to promote the associations on the Tajik aswell as Uzbek side in 2007, as well as strengtheningthe existing WUAs in Kyrgyzstan. The goal was forassociation members to make key decisions on operations,development plans and strategy.IWMI started work on the two tributaries as pilotprojects in 2007, organizing workshops to extendcooperation across borders and discuss technicalmatters of mutual interest. Critical times were identified,such as the water-scarce months of the earlyspring and autumn, and the heavy rain months whichmight cause mud-flows.[ 55 ]