The countries of Central Asia are increasingly taking measures to confront water shortages—but they are working against the clock. The nagging question grows louder—are they acting quickly enough?

Climate change is already evident in Central Asia. Large parts of the region suffered severe drought from 2020-2023. In contrast, 2024 has seen it endure some of the worst flooding experienced in Central Asia in decades. This may have brought some respite from

legitimate concerns over acute water deficits forecast for coming years, but the respite will be brief.

Cutting out seepage

On November 7, Uzbekistan’s President Shavkat Mirziyoyev spoke to government officials about efficient water management.

Mirziyoyev noted that to prevent water seepage, new concrete layers had been laid over around 550 kilometres (342 miles) of canals and ditches, while farmers had poured new concrete over around 13,000 kilometers (8,078 miles) of smaller irrigation networks on their lands.

The good news was that Uzbekistan’s repaired canals had conserved approximately 450mn cubic metres (mcm) of water this year so far. The bad news was that the country was still losing some 13bn cubic metres (bcm) of water annually due to broken-down canals, some of which were built during the Soviet era.

The fact that there had been several successive summers of drought set alarm bells ringing in Central Asia in 2023. In late November of that year, Mirziyoyev warned that Uzbekistan could face shortages of up to 15 bcm of water by 2030. He observed that the country was currently wasting up to 14 bcm of water annually and that at least 12 bcm of that was due to dilapidated canals and ditches.

Uzbekistan was this year in an “emergency mode” to conserve water, said Mirziyoyev, while ordering implementation of a “shock” programme to reline 1,500 kilometres of canals with concrete by the end of the year.

Water planners in Uzbekistan are well aware of how vital the country's network of canals (above is Karasu Left Bank canal and a hydroelectric facility, near Chirchik) is to national water sufficiency. Stopping leakages has become an absolute priority (Credit: Carpodacus, cc-by-sa 3.0). 

On November 7, Mirziyoyev said his government was allocating some 800bn som (about $62.5mn) for concreting an additional 94,000 kilometres (58,408 miles) of internal canals.

Kazakhstan has also been active in saving water.

On the sidelines of the 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference, better known as COP29, in Baku, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev met with Muhammad Al Jasser, president of the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB). Together, they attended a signing ceremony that will see $1.32bn invested in a “water resilience” project in Kazakhstan. The IsDB will cover $1.15bn of that commitment.

The project includes the construction of 11 “strategically placed reservoirs” to store water and decrease the risk of flooding, and rehabilitation work on more than 3,400 kilometres (2,113 miles) of canals in Kazakhstan.

Al Jasser said the investment aims at having “350,000 hectares of sustainably irrigated land for crop production, a 20% average yield increase for key crops, and a 25% reduction in water loss in the irrigation system.”

On the sidelines of climate summit COP29 in Baku last week, the IsDB and Kazakhstan signed a $1.32bn commitment to a “water resilience” project (Credit: IsDB).

Olzhas Bektenov was appointed Kazakhstan’s prime minister on February 6 this year. One of his first actions was to order the Water Resources and Irrigation Ministry to prepare a plan for rational water use.

In late May, the ministry said 57 new reservoirs would be built in Kazakhstan by 2030.

The deal with the IsDB will cover the building of some of these reservoirs. The agreement calls for construction of reservoirs in the Akmola, Almaty, Zhambyl, Kyzylorda, Turkestan, West Kazakhstan and Zhetysu provinces, and also one for the capital, Astana.

Also in February, Kyrgyzstan’s Ministry of Water Resources and Agriculture unveiled plans to build reservoirs in the northeastern part of the country, with each to hold 3.5 mcm of water.

Water sharing

Upstream Kyrgyzstan’s water problems are a bad sign for the entire Central Asian region. Nearly 40% of Central Asia’s water originates in Kyrgyzstan’s mountains (most of the rest comes from fellow upstream and mountainous country Tajikistan.

In 2023, President Mirziyoyev’s press service noted that only 20% of Uzbekistan’s water comes from sources inside the country. The remainder flows from neighbouring states.

In a January interview with state news agency Kabar, Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov said his country would be able to give its neighbours as much water as they need.

Some people in Kyrgyzstan do not agree with this contention. They have questioned why Kyrgyzstan allows so much water to flow into neighbouring states when there are shortages at home.

During this year, the water sharing seems to have worked well. It was widely publicised.

In May, Kazakhstan’s media reported that Uzbekistan agreed to ship more than 900 mcm of water via the “Dostyk” (Friendship) canal to Kazakhstan’s southern Turkestan Province during the agricultural season.

That agreement was reached during a meeting of the Intergovernmental Water Management Coordination Commission, attended by representatives of all five Central Asian states.

In late July, Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation announced that since April 1, Uzbekistan had supplied Kazakhstan with 3.9 bcm of water from the Syr-Darya, one of Central Asia’s two great rivers.

Kazakhstan’s Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation Nurzhan Nurzhigitov said in early November that agreements with Central Asian neighbours would see Kazakhstan receive 11 bcm of water from the Syr-Darya by April 2025.

Tajik and Uzbek officials met in August to discuss the possibility of shipping water from eastern Tajikistan’s Lake Sarez, which at the least would be a difficult feat to accomplish.

Lake Sarez is located high up in mountains, hundreds of kilometres from Uzbekistan. It was formed in 1911 when a massive earthquake caused a landslide that dammed the Murghab River.

Any large-scale construction in this seismically-active area would be risky and could cause the naturally-formed dam to burst.

That has not stopped Tajik authorities from even contemplating the export of water from Lake Sarez to Gulf countries.

Kyrgyz authorities, meanwhile, are talking about various limits in sharing water with neighbours.

There is increasing talk of Kyrgyzstan's premier tourist attraction, Lake Issyk-Kul, being under threat (Credit: Jaya Govinda, cc-by-sa 4.0).

Chairman of Kyrgyzstan’s Cabinet of Ministers Akylbek Japarov told his country’s parliament on November 14 that the government was working to ensure the country’s massive mountainnn lake and premier tourist destination—Issyk-Kul—will be preserved.

Japarov said Kyrgyz officials were in talks with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan on the need to protect Issyk-Kul.

Water from Issyk-Kul spills into the Chu River, which flows into southern Kazakhstan.

Doing enough, quickly enough?

Despite severe flooding that hit many parts of Central Asia in 2024, the governments in the region understand that precipitation is gradually decreasing, glaciers in the mountains are melting and temperatures are rising.

Only in Turkmenistan, a country that is nearly 90%-desert, are officials curiously passive on taking water conservation measures, though Turkmen authorities have a long tradition of avoiding any mention of bad news.

Water is rapidly becoming Central Asia’s most scarce resource.

The cooperation among the region’s states is encouraging, but they will face a daunting challenge when Afghanistan’s Taliban finish building the Qosh Tepa Canal in 2028 and start drawing up to 20% of the water from Central Asia’s other great river, the border river Amu-Darya, which flows to southern Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.

Repairing and improving canal systems and constructing reservoirs are positive steps, but Central Asia’s water supplies are diminishing and its population is rapidly increasing. Are the region’s governments doing enough, quickly enough to prevent a humanitarian disaster caused by climate change? The question must be unfailingly addressed in the coming years.