Strained Currents: Managing the Syr Darya’s Waters

On both banks of the Syr Darya, apartments are springing up. The embankment itself is undergoing extensive renovation. Trucks crawl along, their weight pounding the freshly lain asphalt into shape. Its acrid whiff rankles in the nose for some distance.

Kyzylorda’s new Akim, Nurzhan Akhatov, appointed in August 2024, is determined to make the most of his short term in office, explains Kanat Utegenov, founder of LLP ECO GUARD, an ecological laboratory. This makes the new landscaping important.

“There is a lot of construction… it is visually noticeable to the population,” he told The Times of Central Asia. “Unfortunately, the economics of it have not necessarily been calculated.” Utegenov cites a new stadium on the left bank of the river as an example of one of these potential white elephant projects.

Worse still, all this landscaping is dependent on one critical factor which is only partly under the control of the Akim, and only partly under the control of Kazakhstan. That issue is water.

The low-running Syr Darya passing through Kyzylorda, Kazakhstan; image: TCA, Joe Luc Barnes

In late April, the view that a ritzy new apartment buys you is one of sad, sandy banks. Wading birds plod methodically through the mud, looking for worms. The dirty grey river does not so much flow but keeps up a ponderous momentum, inching its way northwest. Some of this water will reach the North Aral Sea, which is being propped up on life support by the Kokaral Dam.

Utegenov attributes the low water level as being partly due to climatic change. “Winter has become milder and almost snowless,” he said, adding that it’s not unusual to see a low river in spring. “This is when the rice is planted; all the water goes to the irrigation canals.”

Governments across the region are doubling down on rice production, says Bulat Yessekin, an expert on environmental and water policy in Central Asia. However, he points out that growing rice is incredibly inefficient in this part of the world. “If we take into account the full irrigation cycle, five tons (5,000 liters) of water are used to cultivate just one kilo of rice,” he told TCA.

However, Kazakhstan’s government is keen to trumpet successes. The use of laser leveling technology in rice fields has helped save over 200 billion liters of water by distributing it more evenly. According to Kazakh state media, this has meant that the yield from each hectare of rice crop has increased by around 60-70%.

This has done little to convince Yessekin, who believes this is little more than a sticking plaster. “There was no such need for technology before as there was enough water. Now, such technology has become necessary because otherwise, they will simply not be able to grow the crop. In countries with much greater precipitation, such as Thailand or India, you can grow it, but here there are no prospects for rice. Sooner or later people need to move to other crops.”

Yessekin argues that the use of technological quick fixes demonstrates that the authorities have a paradigm issue. “All these technologies for saving water… their purpose is not water conservation or replenishment; it is simply to increase water intake.”

The Kokaral Dam; image: TCA, Stephen M. Bland

The flaw in focusing on “water intake” rather than “water conservation” can be seen a few hundred kilometers west of Kyzylorda, where the remains of the Aral Sea fester like a sore in the heart of Central Asia.

Two rivers flow into the Aral Sea: the Syr Darya, and its sister to the south, the Amu Darya. Each has seen its throughflow decline precipitously over the last century, both in the Soviet and independence eras.

Managing the flow of the Syr Darya requires the coordination of four countries: from its sources in Kyrgyzstan’s mountains, the river flows through Uzbekistan and Tajikistan before reaching Kazakhstan.

Every year, these countries agree on a quota for how much water they can drain from the river. Last year, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan agreed to install digital monitoring stations to more precisely measure these flows.

For these four thirsty nations, the negotiations are complex, particularly as the river passes through the densely populated Ferghana Valley. Most of the Syr Darya’s waters are therefore allocated to Uzbekistan, the most populous country along its course.

Last year, given unexpectedly heavy rainfall, no country came close to using its limit, and more water than expected reached the Aral Sea.

Indeed, over the previous three years, the North Aral Sea grew by 111 km2, with its volume increasing by around 17% in the same period.

Yessekin notes, however, that this increase in water levels is not necessarily positive. “Recent years have been a little better, but experts attribute this to the increased melting of glaciers. This is also not very good, because one day the melting period will end.”

A Dam Shame

Negotiations over water quotas often include much wrangling. Arguments are particularly fierce at the Syr Darya’s headwaters, says Eugene Simonov of the Rivers Without Boundaries think tank. He explains that in the Soviet period, large reservoirs, such as Kyrgyzstan’s Toktogul Reservoir, were built to regulate the flow of water to downstream areas to make it more predictable. However, he notes that since independence, Kyrgyzstan has begun repurposing those reservoirs to satisfy its energy needs.

“This caused significant disruptions in downstream water use,” Simonov told TCA. When water is used to power hydroelectric stations in winter, a side effect is that this increases the flow of water downstream, which can cause flooding. The inverse is true in summer, with downstream water being insufficient when it is hoarded in upstream reservoirs.

“So far, upstream countries (Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan) have consistently refused to develop mutually enforceable agreements with their downstream neighbors, which limits their ability to distort the seasonal flow of rivers by regulating reservoirs,” said Simonov, adding that the inconvenience was such that it led Kazakhstan to build its own reservoir – Kok-Sarai – to try and gain a little more control over the flow of water.

Simonov warns that future projects, including Kambar-Ata-1, a planned Kyrgyz reservoir, will likely be the subject of more quarreling.

“In order to make this development safe for downstream countries, upstream neighbors need to agree to a mutually binding agreement to use the entire cascade for the common good. This has not happened so far, therefore further tensions are possible,” he said.

Rhetoric and Reality

The Syr Darya’s story is part of a broader systemic failure, driven by short-term political cycles and immediate economic pressures. Yessekin observes that dams and reservoirs, which are constructed under the guise of climate adaptation but, in reality, are built for economic and energy goals, act as “blood clots” on the rivers. “With each such action, we strengthen, accelerate, and increase the cause that leads to the degradation of the entire ecosystem,” he said.

Despite scientific knowledge and expertise within government ranks, the pressure to deliver visible results within limited political terms narrows planning horizons to just a few years, too short to address the long-term nature of water and climate crises.

In 2023, the first global water conference in over fifty years took place in New York City. At this and at regional summits, such as last week’s international conference on glacier preservation in Dushanbe, there has been a surge in rhetoric around sustainable water management. Yet there is a contradiction between what Central Asian governments proclaim internationally and what they pursue at home. Most glaring is the region’s failure to wean itself off its addiction to cheap cotton production, a crop that is almost as thirsty as rice, using four tons of water for every kilogram produced.

Without a dramatic shift in water usage habits across the region, the Syr Darya and the broader Aral Sea basin risk further decline. The potential consequences, Yessekin notes, could be severe: “All the recommendations, advice, and warnings that in three to five years there will be conflict and war or famine, they are simply not taken into account. This is the main tragedy of our system.”