Not a Simple Path a Sustainable Future for Central Asia

NOT A SIMPLE PATH A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE FOR CENTRAL ASIA by Kai Wegerich e-mail: [email protected] Occasional Paper No 28 Water Issues Study Group School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) University of London February 2001 “It was Moscow, the centre, the Soviet Union … it was the barbaric use of water resources that led to the Aral tragedy.” (Uzbek President Karimov1) Introduction The new millennium opens the possibility to break with the past and to choose a new path for the future, a realistic path leading to a stable environment, an optimistic path focusing the hopes from the disappointing past and present to a vision for the next 25 years. The UNESCO ‘Vision 2025’ presented in The Hague 2000 is this optimistic path for the water management in Central Asia, which hopes to be as much optimistic as realistic in its vision. It is anticipated to save 20 km3 of water annually for the Aral Sea, so that it stabilises at its current size. However, the future is still a child of the past, which is influenced by the mistakes made in the past and dependent on the ‘Gemeinschaft’ in which it is raised. In this paper the positive outlook adopted by UNESCO for the Aral Sea Basin is critically evaluated in context of past and present constraints. The paper is structured in the following sections. The first part will describe the current status of the Aral Sea to give an understanding, what is going to be sustained, which is followed by the goal of the ‘Vision 2025’. The method leading to sustainability is theoretically evaluated through economic and social theory, giving an explanation of necessary social and economic changes, and their constraints. The theory leads also to an explanation to the adopted ‘vision’. 1 quoted in D.R. Smith, ‘Environmental security and shared water resources in post-soviet Central Asia’ (Post-Soviet Geography, Vol. 36, No. 6, 1995 p.365) A brief survey into the history of cotton production in Central Asia before and during the Russian colonisation, the Soviet Union and the first 10 years of independence serves as an introduction for explanations of the causes for the desiccation of the Aral Sea and leads to an overview into the current situation of the basin. The remaining part analyses independence and land reforms with its consequences for water management and conflict on the international as well as on the local level, finishing with an evaluation of suggested solutions to manage the resource scarcity. Description of the Aral Sea disaster The Aral Sea is a landlocked lake in Central Asia. In the beginning of the 1960's it was still the fourth largest lake in the world; however, by the beginning of the 1990's the surface area had decreased by half: from 66,085 km2 to approximately 33,500 km2. The lake is today divided into two separate bodies of water. The decline of the Aral Sea influenced the ecological, social and economic structures and systems that were traditionally established in the deltas of the lake. For example, the diminished size and increased salinisation of the lake caused a decline of biodiversity of flora and fauna. One of the immediate consequences was the fading and disappearance of traditional economic structures such as tourism and fishing industry. High unemployment and social migration followed the decline. Consequently, the urbanisation of the autonomous republic Karakalpakstan’s is higher than Tashkent oblast, 48.2 per cent and 43.8 per cent respectively.2 Furthermore, the dwindling lake was cause for highly polluting dust and salt storms, effecting not only the health of the inhabitants of the Aral Sea deltas, but also communities located throughout the region of the basin. Let’s make the disaster ‘sustainable’ The UNESCO report for Central Asia offers as goal a future scenario, in which 20 km3 of water are annually allocated to the environment, that is to the Aral Sea. The utilisation of more efficient technology in agricultural production is believed to guarantee a saving of the natural resource water. The implementation of technical changes will lead to an average water-use decline. Possible goals for 2025 Present Future Average water use per hectare in cubic metres for wheat, net, 5,000 <3,200 Average water use per hectare in cubic metres for rice, net, 30,000 <14,000 Average water use per hectare in cubic metres for cotton, net, 12,000 <8,000 Water application efficiency in % in the field 40 >75 Efficiency of water distribution to the fields, in % 50 >70 % of irrigated area salinized (middle and highly salinized) 45 <10 (UNESCO report 2000, p.17) Theoretical analysis of a future path It will be reasoned below that Central Asia has enough water to provide the population with water for industry, domestic and agricultural use. In other words, real 2 R.R. Hanks, ‘A separate space? Karakak nationalism and devolution in post-soviet Uzbekistan’ (Europe Asia Studies Vol.52, No.5, 2000) p.947 2 scarcity of water does not exist. This leads to the question, whether the water scarcity is a scarcity of the natural resource or of the adaptive capacity of the institutions dealing with the Aral Sea problem. The theoretical analysis will indicate why the vision got accepted as solution to the crisis. Furthermore, it will give indication of the constraining factors influencing future changes. The ‘Vision 2025’ can be explained with the model of the environmental Kutznets curve advocated by Allan and Karshenas.3 While the negativists argue that the future is already determined and the direction is the Malthusian catastrophe, Allan and Karshenas are positive in their prediction for a possible future. The negativist approach assumes population growth leads to resource depletion. Moving from a sustainable position first to unsustainability and than either towards the Malthusian or the environmental catastrophe. Significant of this concept is that the amount of resources and the standard of living is continuously shrinking. The Aral Sea Basin followed the negative pattern and took until now the path towards environmental unsustainability. The positivists assume that the future is not negatively determined and that there is potential for change through development. According to Allan and Karshenas, three ‘positive’ future scenarios are possible: a ‘conventional’, a ‘precautionary’ and one reconstructing the natural resource. While in the first scenario, raising of living standards is based on natural resource depletion; in the ‘precautionary’ scenario development first reduces the natural resource, but then stabilises at a certain level of natural resource depletion. In the third scenario, the resource-use, in this case water, not only stabilises but also gets reconstructed. The implementation of the scenarios is dependent on the political will of the leadership. In the case of water, to enforce the ‘conventional’ strategy, decision- makers have to save only small amounts of water and to allocate the water savings away from the agricultural sector towards more profitable sectors such as industry, services or households. In countries dominated by agriculture, water-use in agriculture is approximately 90 per cent of all water consumption. To save water for other sectors would require the raising of water-use efficiency in agriculture either of the distribution system or at the level of the end-user. Reallocation is a matter of politics. In this case reallocation of water towards other sectors might not be difficult, especially if one considers the high returns from these sectors and the assumption that these sectors utilise water without wasting it. The utilised water feeds recycled back into the circle (at least in theory); therefore the amount of the available water is not reduced. However, the ‘conventional’ strategy does not allocate water towards the environment. The “precautionary approach requires that economic development should not reduce the stock or the value of environmental capital for future generations”.4 In the case of the Aral Sea, the enforcement of this strategy not only has to reallocate water to industries, services and households, but also towards the environment. In the precautionary scenario it is only as much water required 3 J.A. Allan & M. Karshenas, ‘Managing environmental capital: the case of water in Israel, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza, 1947 to 1995’ in J.A. Allan (ed.), Water, Peace and the Middle East: Negotiating resources in the Jordan Basin, (Tauris Academic Studies: London, 1996) 4 ibid pp.125-6 3 sustaining the lake at the current level. The problem is that ‘environmental’ water has on the one hand no immediate financial profits, it is not utilised and therefore it is wasted, at least in the paradigm of modernity. As with water for the other sectors, water allocated towards the environment has to come from the main user of water, the agricultural sector. The ‘Vision 2025’ assumes that the water needed to stabilise the lake can be saved only through an increase of technical efficiency of water management in agriculture. Similar to the conventional scenario, savings could be achieved either in the distribution system or at the end-user. While the first suggestion is purely technical the second is also in need of a change in understanding: water is not any more just a resource; it is a scarce good and therefore valuable. Consequently, the end-user will use water more efficiently. In the scenario of natural resource reconstruction, the water needed for the environment cannot be saved through technical improvements alone. To rehabilitate the Aral Sea to a past size, the agricultural sector not only has to cut down on its water consumption through an increase in efficiency, but the agricultural sector has to decrease in scale. Hence, the society as an institution has to change and to adapt new structures.

Load more