Water Unites

discharge times and amounts, as well as the price of energy to be sold to the downstream
countries during the summer period and on the transfer prices of coal, gas and electricity.
The agreement worked well for some years, but in others the promised coal and gas
were not delivered to Kyrgyzstan, which then released water in winter to make up for the
energy shortfall. From 2003 on, the parties failed to agree on annual protocols. Instead,
bilateral and ad-hoc regulations were followed. These are more opaque, do not provide for
long-term planning and preclude any possibility of sanctions in case of non-compliance.
The consequences were painfully visible in the winter of 2003/04. Since the summer
of 2003 witnessed extraordinary high precipitation downstream and less water for
irrigation was required, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan ceased to deliver the agreed amounts
of fossil fuels the following winter. In order to compensate for the loss, Kyrgyzstan produced
more hydropower, releasing much more water than usual from the Toktogul reservoir
that winter. The flow could not be absorbed by the frozen riverbed of the Syr Darya
or the downstream reservoirs and it caused severe flooding in Kazakhstan and fears of
dam failure at the Shardara reservoir, where 2 000 people were evacuated.
The failure of the agreement affects not only energy security of the upstream countries
in winter and irrigation water security downstream in summer, but also the safety of
the dams. During the last few years, the downstream states only minimally participated
in the cost of maintenance and renovation works of the upstream reservoirs, the cost of
which is covered by the relatively poorer Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The Chu-Talas agreement,
which includes cost-sharing mechanisms between Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, is
an exception to this overall trend and shows that it can work. For the Syr Darya, it is
astonishing that even an obvious win-win arrangement like the water-energy trade was
not perceived as having mutual benefits, but rather viewed with mistrust and suspicion.
This can be explained by the lack of previous positive examples of cooperation in other
fields so far, which led to a preference for self-reliance.
In 2005, another effort was undertaken to tackle water-energy issues in a cooperative
manner. With support from the World Bank, a draft framework agreement on a
«Water-Energy Consortium» was prepared in the framework of the Central Asia Cooperation
Organisation (CACO), a short-lived regional organization that later was integrated
into EurAsEC. 3 However, due to different national interests and weak commitment on
the part of the Central Asian countries involved (Turkmenistan was not a member of
CACO), the process stalled and donors ended their support.
3 The EurAsian Economic Community (EurAsEC) is an international economic organization aimed at economic
coordination and creating a joint customs union among its members. The member states are: Belarus, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan (suspended).
52 Additional efforts for water cooperation