‘No Matter How Much Water Comes to Central Asia from Siberian Rivers, It will Be Too Little if Central Asians Don’t Learn to Economize,’ Tashkent Expert Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 18 – Global warning means that Uzbekistan is now receiving just over half as much water each year as it did in 1991, a period when the population continued to rise. The situation in other Central Asian states is similar, Bakhtiyor Ergashev says; and so many in the region put their hopes in the diversion of Siberian river water.

            But “no matter how much water” might come from that direction – and Russia has an interest in promoting such diversion – “it will be too little if Central Asians don’t learn how to economize their use of water, the director of the Ma’no Center for Research Initiatives in Tashken says (asia24.media/news/bakhtiyer-ergashev-skolko-by-vody-ni-prishlo-iz-sibirskikh-rek-ee-budet-malo-esli-my-ne-nauchimsya-e/).

            Most of the water coming into Uzbekistan goes to agriculture, but only ten percent of the fields have modern water-saving irrigation systems. Unless that changes, there soon won’t be enough water for both agriculture and human needs, potentially setting the stage for outmigration or worse.

            What must happen, Ergashev says, is for Uzbekistan and other Central Asian countries to set a price for water rather than continuing to debate whether it should be a free good. If water has a price, then those who use it or want to will be compelled to seek the most efficient way to use the water.

            Putting a price on water, he continues, will also add to Russia’s interests in developing a revised version of the Siberian river diversion project that Moscow earlier rejected. Moscow will make money by selling water to others, have a better path for water from melting permafrost than sending into the Arctic, and gain geopolitically if such a project now goes forward.

            But perhaps the most important reason for that lies elsewhere, the Uzbek expert says. The new project is not about canals which will lose enormous amounts of water from evaporation and filtration but about super-sized pipelines not available 40 years ago that today almost all experts say is the most efficient and least environmentally harmful way for this project to be realized.