Water Unites

In the 1860s, Central Asia-then called Turkestan-fell under the control of Tsarist Russia.
Its agricultural policy fostered the expansion of cotton production and of the irrigation
systems the water-intensive crop requires. In most cases, the former management system
was maintained, but with a key change: instead of being paid by, and accountable to, the
water users, the mirab and aryk aksakal became employees of the Russian Empire. This
meant that they had less incentive to maximize efficiency. To make things worse, irrigation
officials without local knowledge were sent in just as the competition for water
intensified with the cotton expansion. As a consequence, traditional institutions of water
management were weakened while no effective new control mechanisms were introduced;
corruption and unapproved water withdrawal spread. 6
Water usage and water management in the Soviet Union
The Soviet Union continued to realize many of the ambitious plans of the Tsarist period. It
financed and constructed more large-scale irrigation networks. Apart from the economic
objective of establishing the Soviet Union on the world cotton market, agricultural policies
in Central Asia also aimed to develop this poorest region of the Soviet Union. New
water infrastructure was critical to supplying the rapidly increasing rural population of the
region with the water it required.
As part of a massive land reclamation programme for developing the steppes and
deserts into fertile fields, irrigated lands rose from 4.2 million ha in 1950 to 7.4 million ha
in 1989. Water consumption for agriculture increased accordingly and the flow of Amu
Darya and Syr Darya into the Aral Sea decreased from an average of 56 km³ at the beginning
of the 1960s to around 6 km³ in the 1980s.
The reclamation of millions of hectares of additional agricultural and water-intensive
cotton cultivation in the downstream republics was only possible with an extended
water storage and distribution system. This required massive investments in canals,
reservoirs and water pumping stations. In the lowlands, tens of thousands of kilometres
of channels were built. Construction of the largest canal, the Karakum in Turkmenistan,
started in 1954. It brings water from the Amu Darya at Kerki, Turkmenistan, westward
to Mary, Ashgabat and ultimately to the regions close to the Caspian Sea. Other large
irrigation structures include the Big Ferghana Canal (built in 1939), the Amu-Bukhara
irrigation system, the Karshi Canal, bringing water from the Amu Darya to the Talimarjan
reservoir, and water reservoirs like the Tuyamuyun in the Khorezm region, shared
by Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. In some areas, reclamation of new irrigation land
was possible only with the installation of pumps, especially in the Uzbek and Tajik SSRs,
where they ensure at least part of the water supply to more than 60% of irrigated land.
Also upstream, numerous reservoirs have been built in the mountainous regions
to improve the regulation of the rivers for irrigation purposes. The biggest reservoir is the
6 Bichsel 2009, O’Hara 2000, Thurman 2002.
18 Water usage and water management in the Soviet Union