A coalition of environmental organisations is calling on international financial institutions, including the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), to reexamine the utility of financing hydropower projects on rivers “left untouched during the Soviet era.”

The coalition, including CEE Bankwatch and Kazakhstan-based Rivers without Boundaries, sent an appeal on March 14 to the financial institutions, stating 200 hydropower projects at present are either planned or are already under construction in Central Asia, many on rivers that have not been subject to previous infrastructure work. The appeal goes on to argue that some of the projects threaten “unique river basins.”

A CEE Bankwatch background report stressed that the evaporation of the Aral Sea was caused by extensive damming on the middle and lower portions of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers, Central Asia’s two main waterways. But it adds that many of those two rivers’ high-mountain tributaries remain undeveloped.  

A detailed map designed by the NGO coalition indicates that the Naryn River in Kyrgyzstan and the Pyanj River separating Tajikistan and Afghanistan are set to experience heavy hydropower development in the coming years and decades.

“Often in Central Asia, the construction of dams and reservoirs is presented as inevitable, a kind of forced measure to preserve water resources,” a statement issued by the coalition quoted Evgeny Simonov, the international coordinator for Rivers without Boundaries, as saying. “However, global experience tells us that such an approach is extremely ineffective from an economic point of view, and often has destructive consequences from an environmental point of view.”

The highest-profile hydropower project currently in the works is Tajikistan’s Rogun Dam, which, if completed to its current specifications, could become the world’s tallest dam. In late 2024, Rivers without Boundaries published a study indicating that the dam would be uncompetitive as a supplier of electricity by the time it became fully operational, undercut by cheaper solar and wind-power generation options.  

Central Asian governments have cited severe shortages of power to justify not only the development of hydropower, but also the construction of nuclear reactors.  

“If all planned hydropower projects are implemented, the vast river basins of Central Asia will hardly retain any unfragmented natural river habitat,” states the NGO appeal to the international financial institutions.

This article first appeared on Eurasianet here.