Kyrgyzstan Requires Countries Receiving Its Water to Pay for It

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 29 – For more than two decades, Bishkek has urged the countries of Central Asia to pay for water entering their territories as the best means of promoting conservation and eliminating negotiations about amounts or balancing these amounts with deals for electric power.

            But while all the Central Asian countries have moved away from the Soviet-era practice that water is free good, none of the other has gone as far as Kyrgyzstan in seeking to extend that principle to water flowing from one country to another, declaring that from now on, those who get its water will have to pay (asia24.media/news/besplatno-bolshe-ne-budet-s-1-yanvarya-2026-goda-kyrgyzstan-vystavlyaet-scheta-stranam-tsentralnoy-a/).

            Kyrgyzstan, which along with Tajikistan, has long been considered a water surplus region which supplies water to the other countries of the region which are all downstream, understandably is more prepared to make that demand; but now the question arise as to how prices will be set and how they will be collected.

            With regard to the first, there are likely to be lively diplomatic debates regarding price and even the possibility that other countries will respond to Kyrgyzstan’s action by raising prices on goods they export to Bishkek. And with regard to the second, Kyrgyzstan is likely to find it difficult to block water from flowing downstream and thus not able to force others to pay.

            But despite that, what Kyrgyzstan has done appears likely to transform water debates in Central Asia from being about amounts of water to be shared to being about what prices those who have water will charge and how they will collect it. Given the impact that has had within these countries, Bishkek’s decision may prove a real turning point in the region.