New reports stress need for regional water cooperation

The United Nations World Water Development’s second annual report, ‘Water, a shared responsibility’, released on 9 March, raises concerns over water resources in Central Asia and the dying Aral Sea, once one of the world’s largest inland bodies of water. The report urges the nations of Central Asia to find more equitable ways of sharing water from the two great rivers that flow through the region. Although Central Asian countries have been independent from the Soviet Union since 1991, still no effective multilateral agreement has been reached between the countries over use of water. According to the report, loss of water reaching the Aral Sea has caused it to lose 75 percent of its volume since 1960. At the same time, the inflow of excessive chemicals from agricultural run-off has caused a collapse in the Aral Sea fishing industry, a loss of biodiversity and wildlife habitat, and an increase in human pulmonary diseases and infant mortality. “Since 1991 when we came to the Aral for the first time, there has been no doubt in my mind that Big Aral [the remaining eastern part of the sea] will disappear,” Kurt Bertelsen Christensen, Chairman of The Danish Society for a Living Sea - working on an Aral Sea project since 1995, told IRIN, from Copenhagen. The UN report also illustrates how development in the wider Central Asian region will put more pressure on regional water supplies. One of the two major rivers of Central Asia, the Amu Darya, which flows into the Aral Sea, originates in Afghanistan. As stability leads to economic development and population growth there, the need for up to 10 times the current usage of water from Afghans could aggravate regional tensions. Meanwhile, most of the world’s largest rivers are losing their connection to the sea and nearly a quarter of those left risk being disconnected in the next 15 years, according to a new World Wildlife Fund (WWF) report, ‘Free-flowing rivers – Economic Luxury or Ecological Necessity?’. The study - released on Monday - said only a third of the world’s 177 large rivers (1,000 km and longer) remain free-flowing, unimpeded by dams or other barriers. Only 21 of these actually run freely from source to sea, the other 43 are large tributaries of rivers such as the Congo, Amazon and Lena. The WWF study says most of the world’s largest rivers are losing their connection to the sea through overuse, primarily by irrigated agriculture. Such waterways play a key role in regulating pollution, but drained or clogged rivers are a growing global trend that threaten the supply of drinking water, sanitation and agriculture, the report noted.