Water Resources Management and Dynamic Changes in Water Politics in the Transboundary River Basins of Central Asia
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Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 25, 3281–3299, 2021 https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-3281-2021 © Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Water resources management and dynamic changes in water politics in the transboundary river basins of Central Asia Xuanxuan Wang1,2, Yaning Chen1, Zhi Li1, Gonghuan Fang1, Fei Wang1,2, and Haichao Hao1,2 1State Key Laboratory of Desert and Oasis Ecology, Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Urumqi 830011, China 2College of Resources and Environment, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China Correspondence: Zhi Li ([email protected]) Received: 7 December 2020 – Discussion started: 14 December 2020 Revised: 12 April 2021 – Accepted: 25 May 2021 – Published: 16 June 2021 Abstract. The growing water crisis in Central Asia (CA) and most interconnected with other countries. Our findings sug- the complex water politics over the region’s transboundary gest that improving the water and land allocation systems and rivers have attracted considerable attention; however, they strengthening the water cooperative networks among coun- are yet to be studied in depth. Here, we used the Gini co- tries will contribute to the elimination of conflicts and pro- efficient, water political events, and social network analy- motion of cooperation in CA. sis to assess the matching degree between water and socio- economic elements and analyze the dynamics of water pol- itics in the transboundary river basins of CA. Results indi- cate that the mismatch between water and land resources 1 Introduction is a precondition for conflict, with the average Gini coeffi- cient between water and population, gross domestic prod- With the exponential growth in the world’s population and uct (GDP), and cropland measuring 0.19 (highly matched), rapid expansion of the global economy, freshwater resources 0.47 (relatively mismatched), and 0.61 (highly mismatched), have become increasingly crucial (Fischhendter et al., 2011; respectively. Moreover, the Gini coefficient between water Hanasaki et al., 2013; McCracken and Wolf, 2019). There are and cropland increased by 0.07 from 1997 to 2016, indicating 310 transboundary rivers worldwide involving 150 countries, an increasing mismatch. In general, a total of 591 water polit- and even though water-sharing treaties are in place, conflicts ical events occurred in CA, with cooperation accounting for are frequent (Di Baldassarre et al., 2013; McCracken and 89 % of all events. Water events have increased slightly over Wolf, 2019; Wei et al., 2021). Meanwhile, global warming the past 70 years and shown three distinct stages, namely a has exacerbated the scarcity and uneven distribution of wa- stable period (1951–1991), a rapid increase and decline pe- ter resources, further complicating the water-related politi- riod (1991–2001), and a second stable period (2001–2018). cal situation in transboundary river basins, especially in arid Overall, water conflicts mainly occurred in summer and win- regions (Wolf, 1998; Takahashi et al., 2013; Zeitoun et al., ter. Among the region’s transboundary river basins, the Aral 2013; Zhupankhan et al., 2017; Chen et al., 2018). Sea basin experienced the strongest conflicts due to the com- Due to the prolonged period of inappropriate management petitive utilization of the Syr and Amu Darya rivers. Fol- of its transboundary waters, Central Asia (CA) is currently lowing the collapse of the former Soviet Union, the den- experiencing major contradictions between water supply and sity of water conflictive and cooperative networks in CA in- demand (Libert and Lipponen, 2012; Li et al., 2020). Most of creased by 0.18 and 0.36, respectively. Uzbekistan has the the region’s surface water resources originate in the moun- highest degree centrality in the conflictive network (6), while tains of the upstream countries (Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan), Kazakhstan has the highest degree centrality in the coopera- while its agricultural areas are primarily located in the down- tive network (15), indicating that these two countries are the stream countries (Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbek- istan). This spatiotemporal dislocation of water and land re- Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union. 3282 X. Wang et al.: Water resources management and dynamic changes in water politics sources has aggravated the complexity of water allocation States and found that cooperation was more common than (Rahaman, 2012; Wang et al., 2020a). Meanwhile, following conflict in the domestic environment. However, the TFDD the collapse of the former Soviet Union in 1991, the origi- database has rarely been applied in the investigation of water nal hydropower allocation systems have become invalid, and politics in CA, where water is critical to regional stability. political disputes have intensified because of the rise in com- Furthermore, since most of the events recorded in the TFDD petitive water demands for irrigation independence in down- occurred prior to 2008, the study of the current water political stream countries and energy independence in upstream coun- situation in CA would require additional data sources. tries (Chatalova et al., 2017). Water resources have thus be- At present, related research in CA mainly focuses on the come the key to the security and stability of CA (Bernauer management and allocation of water resources, either sub- and Siegfried, 2012; Karthe et al., 2015; Xu, 2017). The Cen- regionally or across the entire region (Schlueter et al., 2013; tral Asia Human Development Report by the United Nations Mazhikeyev et al., 2015; Chen et al., 2017). Sorg et al. (2014) Development Programme (UNDP) Regional Bureau for Eu- analyzed the impact of climate change and socio-political de- rope and the Commonwealth of Independent States (RBEC) velopment on water distribution in the Syr River basin, and also pointed out that “the benefits from efficient use of wa- they suggested that reservoirs could partially replace glaciers ter and energy resources could generate a regional econ- as water redistributors in the future. Pak et al. (2013) in- omy twice as large and well-off 10 years from now”. More- vestigated the history of water allocation mechanisms and over, researchers contend that the degree of matching be- agreements on water sharing in the Isfara basin and high- tween water and socioeconomic development is significant lighted that the implementation of water-sharing agreements to CA’s water politics. The Gini coefficient is an effective was hindered by limited technical capabilities. Consider- method for measuring the matching and inequality between ing Uzbekistan as a case study, Abdullaev and Rakhmatul- water resources and agricultural land (Hanjra et al., 2009; Hu laev (2013) analyzed the transformation of water resource et al., 2016; Yu et al., 2016; Liu et al., 2018; Qin et al., 2020), management in CA and concluded that the hydraulic mission the status of yield inequality (Sadras and Bongiovanni, 2004; has been transformed into different types of control over wa- Kisekka et al., 2017), and the irrationality of land use struc- ter management. More recently, Chang et al. (2018) explored tures (Zheng et al., 2013; Yan et al., 2016). the political risks of Central Asian countries based on the po- The water politics of transboundary rivers are emerging litical risk assessment model and discovered that there were as a compelling research field in social hydrology (Wolf, emergent opportunities, as well as political risks, in the re- 2007; Cabrera et al., 2013; Soliev et al., 2015). Some schol- gion. ars have made comprehensive evaluations of water politics However, there is a lack of comprehensive research on based on a variety of models (Wolf et al., 2003; Rai et al., changes in the water politics of CA from the perspective of 2014; Wang et al., 2015). For example, Rai et al. (2017) as- water-related political events in conjunction with the situa- sessed the opportunity and risk of water-related cooperation tion of water and socio-economic development. Therefore, in three major transboundary river basins in South Asia based in this work, we evaluate the matching degree between wa- on the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation model. Other schol- ter resources and socio-economic elements in CA. In so do- ars have analyzed water politics from a historical–political ing, we reveal the changing policies and institutional struc- perspective (Mollinga, 2001; Wegerich, 2008; Link et al., tures of water management, and then further explore the dy- 2016). In addition, water conflictive and cooperative events namics of water politics in CA’s transboundary river basins are key variables for characterizing the overall state of water through social network analysis. Our research informs the politics in a region. The Transboundary Freshwater Dispute scientific management of water resources by policymakers Database (TFDD), established by researchers at Oregon State and provides suggestions for more effective cooperation be- University (Wolf, 1999), includes the water-related conflic- tween Central Asian countries that can eventually be applied tive and cooperative events between two or more countries internationally. in transboundary river basins around the world. The TFDD has been widely used for water political analysis in the past few decades (Yoffe et al., 2003; Giordano et al., 2014; Gu- 2 Material and methods nasekara et al., 2014; McCracken and Wolf, 2019). Based on the TFDD database, Giordano and Wolf (2002) selected 2.1 Study area and its transboundary rivers three case areas – South Asia, the Middle East, and South- ern Africa – to evaluate the connections between internal Central Asia is located in the center of Eurasia and cov- and external interactions over freshwater resources, and they ers a total area of 400:17 × 104 km2 (Fig. 1). The CA re- found that water-related events and scales usually had dif- gion borders Russia to the west and north, China to the east, ferent complexity and spatial variations due to specific his- and Afghanistan and Iran to the south (Wang et al., 2020a).