Water Unites

Creating platforms for dialogue
The history of IFAS and other regional institutions has shown that mutual mistrust and
lack of positive perceptions of benefits are a major obstacle to regional cooperation.
Therefore, international actors also finance and organise regional conferences and meetings
as platforms for political dialogue. Based on its 2007 Strategy for a New Partnership
with Central Asia, the European Union has established an EU-Central Asia Platform on
Environment and Water with regular high-level conferences as well as working group
meetings for senior officials. The UN Regional Centre for Preventive Diplomacy in Central
Asia (UNRCCA) regularly engages the political leadership in dialogue on water. The
UNECE Water Convention brings together water experts from Central Asia and the
Caucasus, including from countries not party to the convention. The World Bank, in
conjunction with its involvement in the preparation of two assessment studies on the
controversial Roghun hydropower plant in Tajikistan, facilitates a structured process for
riparian involvement, including information exchange meetings with representatives of
governments as well as civil society from all riparian states. 5
These conferences and their joint statements often have no binding character and
no concrete results. But one must not underestimate their contribution to regional confidence-building,
reduction of mutual mistrust and acquainting Central Asia water experts
with international principles and practices. In fact, cooperation failure is often not rooted
in an unwillingness to cooperate or to share but in a reluctance to trust. From this point of
view, it is of significant value that international players provide forums where high-level
politicians as well as bureaucrats can meet and exchange views.
On 1 April 2008, the German Federal Foreign Office announced the launch of a water
initiative for Central Asia at the Berlin water conference «Water Unites-New Perspectives
for Cooperation and Security». The initiative was conceived as an integral component
of the EU Strategy for a New Partnership with Central Asia, adopted in June 2007,
during the German EU presidency. The Berlin Process, as it became known, presents
an offer by the German Federal Government to the countries of Central Asia to support
them in water management and to make water a subject of intensified transboundary
cooperation. The primary goal is to set in motion a process of political rapprochement in
Central Asia that leads to closer cooperation on the use of water resources and that may
result in joint water and energy management in the long term.
The most extensive element of the Berlin Process is the Transboundary Water
Management in Central Asia Programme, which the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale
Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH is carrying out on behalf of the German Federal
Foreign Office. GIZ is collaborating closely to that end with national and international
partners such as the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). Under
that programme, measures have been implemented since 2009 that not only optimise
5 See http://ec.europa.eu/europeaid/where/asia/regional-cooperation-central-asia/index_en.htm, http://unrcca.
unmissions.org/, http://go.worldbank.org/ZQXIA8J0H0.
The role of international players 61