![[Tajikistan] Women and children, often young girls, often have no choice but to walk for miles to fetch clean drinking water.](https://assets.thenewhumanitarian.org/s3fs-public/styles/responsive_large_2x/public/images/20048164.jpg.webp?itok=0QGrrMtR "Many women and children have fallen victim to traffickers.")
Savitali, a middle-aged farmer from southern Kyrgyzstan, has moved his family north because there is no water.
"We had to carry water from a river hundreds of metres away - going down and up a steep mountain slope for the past 10 years as the piped-water network installed in our village during Soviet times broke down," said the father of six. "You cannot have a normal life without water, and I had no other choice than to leave my home village. Many of my neighbours did the same, as there is no future in our village."
His family left Talaa, in the Kara-Kulja District of the southern Osh Province.
Access to safe water is a key problem in many parts of rural Central Asia, with poor regional cooperation on the management of cross-border water resources aggravating the situation.
For many villagers in the densely populated Ferghana Valley shared by Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, the lack of potable water is a growing concern. Many use water from irrigation trenches or other open sources that are vulnerable to waterborne diseases like diarrhoea and typhoid.
The World Bank estimates that only 30 percent of households in rural areas of Central Asia have piped water. The population of the region - which comprises the five former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan - is 60 million. Nearly 25 million people - comparable to the combined population of the Netherlands and Belgium - lack proper access to safe drinking water.
According to the Asian Development Bank, which supports many water-related and irrigation-rehabilitation projects in the region, Central Asia is relatively water-rich compared with many other parts of Asia, with annual per capita water use of 2,600 cubic metres.
"It has been said that Central Asia has enough available water resources to support a population of 35 to 50 million people, but that the water is so unevenly distributed as to be effectively in short supply," said a report by David Smith, assistant professor of Geography in Ohio Northern University’s Department of History and Political Science.
Smith said the bulk of the region's water - more than 80 percent - was used for irrigation, with the rest utilised for personal and industrial consumption.
The Central Asian Alliance for Water, a nongovernmental organisation based in Osh, said little investment over the past two decades, a dependency syndrome inherited from the Soviet era and a perception that water was a free commodity had worsened the situation.
The World Bank said many rural water-supply services were in a state of total disrepair. Water management during Soviet times was highly centralised, with Moscow instructing the upstream republics of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to accumulate water in their reservoirs in winter and to release it downstream at the beginning of the cotton-farming season to Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. In return, the three Soviet states provided their upstream neighbours with the fuel and natural gas needed for energy during winter. However, when they all became independent in 1991, their interests started to clash.
"Rising nationalism and competition among the five Central Asia states has meant they have failed to come up with a viable regional approach to replace the Soviet system of management," said a recent report by the International Crisis Group, an international thinktank. "The downstream countries require more water for their growing agricultural sectors and rising populations, while the economically weaker upstream countries are trying to win more control over their resources and want to use more water for electricity generation and farming."
Tensions focus on the region’s two main rivers that flow into the Aral Sea - Kyrgyzstan’s Syr Darya winds through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan’s Amu Darya through Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. The disputes between the countries often result in a lack of drinking and irrigation water for villagers.
However, significant steps are being taken to tackle the issue.
A special United Nations-supported commission involving Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan was established in July, with the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) saying the agreement provided a model for cooperation for other cross-border water issues in the region.
UNESCAP said that as part of the bilateral deal, Kazakhstan had agreed to pay part of the operating and maintenance expenses for a number of Kyrgyz dams and reservoirs. Kim Hak-Su, UNESCAP’s executive secretary, said the deal was an “eloquent symbol” of cooperation to address such issues.
“It lays the foundation for future cooperation in achieving more sustainable growth in these two countries and in Central Asia,” Hak-Su said.
"We had to carry water from a river hundreds of metres away - going down and up a steep mountain slope for the past 10 years as the piped-water network installed in our village during Soviet times broke down," said the father of six. "You cannot have a normal life without water, and I had no other choice than to leave my home village. Many of my neighbours did the same, as there is no future in our village."
His family left Talaa, in the Kara-Kulja District of the southern Osh Province.
Access to safe water is a key problem in many parts of rural Central Asia, with poor regional cooperation on the management of cross-border water resources aggravating the situation.
For many villagers in the densely populated Ferghana Valley shared by Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, the lack of potable water is a growing concern. Many use water from irrigation trenches or other open sources that are vulnerable to waterborne diseases like diarrhoea and typhoid.
The World Bank estimates that only 30 percent of households in rural areas of Central Asia have piped water. The population of the region - which comprises the five former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan - is 60 million. Nearly 25 million people - comparable to the combined population of the Netherlands and Belgium - lack proper access to safe drinking water.
According to the Asian Development Bank, which supports many water-related and irrigation-rehabilitation projects in the region, Central Asia is relatively water-rich compared with many other parts of Asia, with annual per capita water use of 2,600 cubic metres.
"It has been said that Central Asia has enough available water resources to support a population of 35 to 50 million people, but that the water is so unevenly distributed as to be effectively in short supply," said a report by David Smith, assistant professor of Geography in Ohio Northern University’s Department of History and Political Science.
Smith said the bulk of the region's water - more than 80 percent - was used for irrigation, with the rest utilised for personal and industrial consumption.
The Central Asian Alliance for Water, a nongovernmental organisation based in Osh, said little investment over the past two decades, a dependency syndrome inherited from the Soviet era and a perception that water was a free commodity had worsened the situation.
The World Bank said many rural water-supply services were in a state of total disrepair. Water management during Soviet times was highly centralised, with Moscow instructing the upstream republics of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to accumulate water in their reservoirs in winter and to release it downstream at the beginning of the cotton-farming season to Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. In return, the three Soviet states provided their upstream neighbours with the fuel and natural gas needed for energy during winter. However, when they all became independent in 1991, their interests started to clash.
![[Kyrgyzstan] A queue at the only water tap in Naiman.](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIABAP///wAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw== "A queue at the only water pipe in Naiman, Kyrgzstan. The World Bank estimates that only 30 percent of households in rural areas of Central Asia have piped water")
Photo: IRIN  |
| A queue at the only water pipe in Naiman, Kyrgzstan. The World Bank estimates that only 30 percent of households in rural areas of Central Asia have piped water |
Tensions focus on the region’s two main rivers that flow into the Aral Sea - Kyrgyzstan’s Syr Darya winds through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan’s Amu Darya through Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. The disputes between the countries often result in a lack of drinking and irrigation water for villagers.
However, significant steps are being taken to tackle the issue.
A special United Nations-supported commission involving Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan was established in July, with the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) saying the agreement provided a model for cooperation for other cross-border water issues in the region.
UNESCAP said that as part of the bilateral deal, Kazakhstan had agreed to pay part of the operating and maintenance expenses for a number of Kyrgyz dams and reservoirs. Kim Hak-Su, UNESCAP’s executive secretary, said the deal was an “eloquent symbol” of cooperation to address such issues.
“It lays the foundation for future cooperation in achieving more sustainable growth in these two countries and in Central Asia,” Hak-Su said.
This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions
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