1. Water Resources in Central Asia

2. The Syr Darya Basin

3. The Syr Darya Basin
The Syr Darya drains an area of over 800,000
square kilometres, but no more than 200,000
square kilometres actually contribute significant
flow to the river. Its annual flow is a very
modest 37 cubic kilometres per year half that
of its sister river, the Amu Darya. Kyrgyzstan is
the upstream country. Uzbekistan, Tajikistan
and Kazakhstan is downstream countries.
Kyrgyzstan privatized its state and
collectivefarms; this privatization resulted in an
increase in the number of agricultural water
users in 90's.

4. İncrease in demand for water for agricultural
purposes in the upstream countries has the
effect of reducing the availability of water for
downstream users. Kyrgyzstan did not allow
much flexibility to downstream countries. İn
2002 the number of farms had increased to
some 84,000, most of which were small in size.
Although at the main rivers these changes might
not be obvious, at the small transboundary
tributaries within the Ferghana Valley the small
changes have significant impact, but were not
noticed internationally.

5. 
Disputes in which water played a significant
role were based not on allocation issues, but on
different uses of water in now-competing
sectors, such as water releases from the
Toktogul Reservoir for hydropower. The
previous arrangements for water allocation
ceased to function when Kazakhstan and
Uzbekistan began to charge market prices for
petroleum and gas supplies to Kyrgyzstan.
Kyrgyzstan began to release water from
Toktogul during the winter, instead of during the
summer, to produce energy for its population;
90% of Kyrgyzstan’s energy consumption is
based on hydropower.

6. 

On 17 March 1998, the governments of
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan
adopted an interstate agreement on the use of
the water and energy resources of the Syr
Darya River basin.
According to this agreement, each riparian
state is responsible for the operation and
maintenance costs of the water infrastructure
owned by it (Article VII). Nevertheless, the
downstream riparian states agreed to purchase
Kyrgyz hydropower during the summer and sell
other energy resources to Kyrgyzstan in the
winter.

7. The Talas Basin

8. The Talas Basin
During the Soviet era, the Kyrgyz SSR and the
Kazakh SSR signed an agreement on water
sharing in the Talas Basin in Moscow on 31
January 1983. Under the agreement it was
decided to share the flow within the Talas Basin
equally 50% to each republic. The 1983
protocol assumes a mean annual flow of 1616
million m3 in the Talas Basin. Kazakhstan’s
share has two components. The main
component is the discharge from the Kirov
Reservoir of 716 million m3 the remaining 92
million m3 are formed within Kazakhstan’s own
territory.

9. The agreement determines that Kazakhstan
should receive 579.6 million m3 from the Kirov
Reservoir in the vegetation period and in the
non-vegetation period an amount of 136.4
million m3 The 1983 agreement makes no
reference to the operation and maintenance
costs of the reservoir.

Kyrgyzstan supplied to Kazakhstan in 1997 and
in 1998 less water during the vegetation season
than the agreed amount.

10. 
On 21 January 2000 in Astana, Kazakhstan
and Kyrgyzstan signed an agreement on cost
sharing for the transboundary water
infrastructure in the Chu and Talas Basin. The
agreement was only ratified by the Republic of
Kazakhstan. The agreement makes no
reference to the water-sharing agreement
signed in Moscow in 1983, but water sharing is
vaguely addressed in the first Article: ‘The
Parties agree that use of water resources,
operation and maintenance of the water
facilities for interstate use shall be allocated to
the mutual benefit of the Parties on a fair and
reasonable basis.

11. The Zerafshan Basin

12. The Zerafshan Basin
At the beginning of the 2000s the international
conflict focus on the Zerafshan Basin was
mainly on water pollution. However, total six
hydropower projects as priority projects for the
Zerafshan River

In a more recent study the former Soviet plans
to establish a cascade of 14 smaller
hydropower plants in the upper Zerafshan are
mentioned. Nevertheless, after a feasibility
study by the Chinese company Sino Hydro on
three locations, only the Yavan HPP was
selected. Even though Schrader argues that the
Yavan Dam would not have any impact on
Uzbekistan.

13. Conclusion
All the Central Asian countries continue to follow
a long-term strategy of irrigation management
transfer and therefore will charge the costs of
operation and maintenance to the water users,
it appears that some of the currently active
irrigated areas will slowly disappear because of
the high cost of lift irrigation and because of the
potential costs for the operation and
maintenance of reservoirs and the competition
with other sectors or foreign consumers when it
comes to cheap electricity from hydropower.