Water Unites

Turkmenistan refused to hand over its water intake point of the Karakum Canal at the
Amu Darya. In 1990, Moscow’s MinVodKhoz was closed down and replaced by a «State
Trust of Water Works Construction» (VodStroi), but the Central Asian Republics’ Min-
VodKhozes continued to exist.
Thus, water governance prior to independence was hierarchically and centrally
organized and based on a Soviet Union-wide approach. It was a purely state-managed
system without any economic mechanisms or stakeholder participation. It proved to be
inefficient and was marked by wasteful usage patterns. The overuse of water led to a de
facto scarcity of water in some regions, especially in the lower reaches of the rivers. 12
Ecological legacies:
environmental impacts of unsustainable water management
The overuse of water with ignorance of ecological limits and poor management during
the Soviet period have since led to severe ecological consequences that the independent
states have to face, the gravest being that 80% of the Aral Sea has turned into a desert. In
addition, most of the irrigated land is plagued by salinization, waterlogging and water
erosion. In the regions close to the Aral Sea, about 90% of the land is affected by salinization.
The decay of soil quality requires additional large volumes of water to rinse away the
salt and still reduces fertility. The regions at the middle and lower reaches of the big rivers
suffer from water scarcity. The inflow of drainage water heavily contaminated with nitrates,
organic fertilizers, and phenol has polluted the ground water. In the downstream regions
of the Syr and Amu Darya, the provinces of Kyzylorda in Kazakhstan, Dashhoguz in Turkmenistan
as well as Khorezm and Karakalpakstan in Uzbekistan, water is so polluted that
it is unsuitable for either drinking or irrigation. At the Syr Darya, another potential health
threat is radioactive pollution. Several uranium dumping sites are located close to the tributaries
and are subjected to landslides. 13
Decades of overuse of water in agriculture have shaped infrastructure, economic
de pen dencies, social structures, usage patterns and traditions that are not easy to change.
Therefore, these usage patterns continue to exist and have an impact even today. As
described, during Soviet times water consumption did not have to be paid on a quantitative
basis. Thus there were no economic incentives to limit consumption. This behaviour
was aggravated by the Soviet ideology of human control over nature, which posits that
nature is a mere means for human development and may thus be fully exploited. In addition,
deteriorated infrastructure and inefficient irrigation techniques led to high water
consumption. Instead of directing the water through closed pipes, water evaporates in
open channels or trickles into earthen channels that are not lined. Outdated irrigation
techniques with high water consumption and a high evaporation rate on the fields are
12 O’Hara 2000, Sehring 2002.
13 MKUR 2006, Bucknall et al. 2003.
Water management in Central Asia – the legacies of the past
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