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Russian water on troubled
soils
By Sergei Blagov
MOSCOW
- All of a sudden, an influential Russian politician,
Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, has moved to revive a bold
plan to build a 2,225-km Siberia-Central Asia Canal to
divert Siberian rivers into Asian deserts. However,
other Russian officials and experts warn that the
project's economic viability is far from certain.
Earlier this month, Luzhkov sent an official
letter to President Vladimir Putin, suggesting
construction of a 16-meter-deep and 200-meter-wide canal
from Khanty-Mansiisk to Central Asia through Kazakhstan.
The Siberian river diversion plan involves the
construction of a huge canal, which would bring
additional water from the Siberian Ob river (subsequently
the Irtysh) to the Central Asian Amu Darya and
Syr Darya rivers. The canal project would involve
diverting about 6-7 percent of the Ob's waters or some
27 cubic kilometers a year.
Luzhkov argued that
selling excess fresh water to Central Asia could prove a
lucrative project for Russia. According to Luzhkov, the
canal would enlarge the amount of arable land in Central
Asia by roughly 2 million hectares, and by 1.5 million
hectares in southern Siberia.
The project has an
estimated price tag of between US$12 billion and $20
billion, an exorbitant amount for impoverished Central
Asian states. It is not a small amount even for Russia,
currently awash with petrodollars. However, Luzhkov
suggested forming an International Eurasian Consortium
funded by loans collateralized by future proceeds from
fresh water sales to Central Asia.
Some Russian
experts, though, are pessimistic. The plan to divert
Siberian rivers is a "wicked idea", argues Alexander
Nazarov, head of the Northern Affairs committee of the
Federation Council, the upper house of the Russian
parliament. The waters of the Ob river are too polluted
by nearby oil fields, Nazarov announced on December 16.
This opinion was echoed by Nikolai Glazovsky, head of
the Moscow-based Institute of Geography. "Such an idea
should not be nurtured by any normal-thinking person,"
Glazovsky told journalists on December 16.
Russian media outlets have also ridiculed
Luzhkov's proposal, and the Kommersant daily quoted one
government source as suggesting that the idea be checked
not by economists but by mental health experts. However,
it is understood that the mayor is lobbying in favor of
Moscow's huge complex of municipal construction
companies, which could get lucrative contracts in the
course of the canal project.
Normalization and
eventual peaceful development in Afghanistan would mean
growth in the Amu Darya's water consumption there by
some 10 cubic kilometers a year, according to Luzhkov's
estimates. That would mean that Uzbekistan's fresh water
supply could be halved, Luzhkov's draft suggests.
Both Central Asian rivers, the Amu Darya and the
Syr Darya, flow to the Aral Sea - the Syr Darya from
Kyrgyzstan through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan and the Amu
Darya from Tajikistan through Uzbekistan and
Turkmenistan. In recent decades, irrigation has so
depleted both rivers that in most years no water has
reached the Aral Sea.
No big wonder, then, that Central
Asian governments back the plan to divert Siberian
waters. The on-going environmental disaster around
the Aral Sea, which affects some 50 million people,
should not be viewed as an internal problem of any state
or Central Asian region, Tajik President Emomali
Rahmonov reportedly told a meeting of donors for saving
the Aral Sea in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, earlier this
month. According to the RIA news agency, the meeting
concluded that the Aral Sea could not be saved without
the Siberian river diversion scheme.
By
2020, according to United Nations experts, the shrinking
Aral Sea may no longer exist. UN Environmental
Program specialists estimate that the Aral's surface area is
now just 25 percent of that before Soviet central
planners began diverting the rivers that feed the sea
for ill-conceived agricultural irrigation schemes. There
is little that can be done at this stage to save the sea
from extinction, the UN experts say.
The revival
of the Siberia-Central Asia Canal plan comes as yet
another page in the project's longish saga. Through the
1970s and the 1980s, the water resources ministry of the
former Soviet Union sponsored a water diversion
blueprint, and nearly succeeded in launching actual
construction.
However, the project was condemned
by Russian scholars, who argued that diverting river
waters could upset the global environmental balance.
These protests became the roots of Russia's homegrown
environmental movement. The Soviet government also found
the project not feasible economically, hence in the
mid-1980s the plan was abandoned.
However, the project is being revitalized at a time
when Central Asian states are struggling to share
water resources, and Uzbekistan faces serious problems.
Agriculture is the cornerstone of the country's economy,
and thirsty crops such as cotton and rice require
intensive irrigation. Uzbekistan's agricultural
infrastructure is dependent on irrigation, which
consumes about 90 percent of the country's water
resources. In 2001, the country's rice crop reportedly
plunged by over 50 percent as compared to 2000, due to
lack of water.
In recent months, Uzbekistan has
sponsored a number of conferences to support the canal
project. One gathering in Tashkent suggested the
establishment of an international consortium to develop
the project and sought support from leaders of
Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Russia. The
gathering specifically argued that the canal could help
to supply more water to Russia's Tyumen, Kurgan and
Orenburg regions.
The Russian government is yet
to come up with any official reaction relative to the
canal project. However, some officials have indicated
that Russia itself may face water shortages. Increasing
deficiency of clean fresh water is among Russia's most
urgent macro-economic and geopolitical problems,
Russia's natural resources minister Vitaly Artyukhov
announced last November.
Brazil tops the list of
big players in fresh water, with 12.7 percent of the
world's renewable supply, while Russia is second with
10.2 percent and China trails third with 8.3 percent,
according to the Washington-based World Resources
Institute.
In the meantime, competition for
water is increasing in Central Asia at an alarming rate,
adding tension to what is already a volatile region.
During the Soviet era, water and energy resources were
exchanged freely across Central Asia, and Moscow
provided the funds to build and maintain infrastructure.
Water use has increased since the Central Asian states
became independent in 1991 and is now at an
unsustainable level. Due to lack of funding, irrigation
systems have decayed and half of all irrigation water
never reaches crops.
The problem is that the
five Central Asian states have largely failed to come up
with a viable multi-lateral approach to replace the
Soviet system of management. Therefore, disputes over
water and energy have been second only to Islamic
extremism as a source of tension in Central Asia,
according to a recent report by the International Crisis
Group (ICG), a Brussels-based think tank.
Shortly after independence, the five countries
agreed to maintain the Soviet-era quota system, but this
has become unworkable. In the wake of the civil war in
Tajikistan and the decay of Kyrgyzstan's economy,
water-monitoring facilities have fallen into disrepair.
Moreover, an annual cycle of disputes has
developed between the three downstream countries -
Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan - which are all
heavy consumers of water for growing cotton, and the
upstream nations - Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, according
to ICG. The downstream countries require more water for
their growing agricultural sectors and rising
populations, while the economically weaker upstream
countries want to use more water for electricity
generation.
Moreover, Turkmenistan is using too
much water to the detriment of Uzbekistan, which in turn
has been accused by Kazakhstan of taking more than its
share. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan say that the three
downstream countries are all exceeding quotas. Even
within Uzbekistan, provinces have accused one another of
using too much water.
Moreover, a multilateral
agreement between Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan
on how to divide the Syr Darya's waters between them
expires in 2003, while these countries are yet to agree
on a new deal.
The ICG has warned that disputes
over water and energy have contributed to a growth of
tension in Central Asia. For instance, Uzbekistan has
carried out military exercises that look suspiciously
like practice runs at capturing by force the Toktogul
water reservoir in Kyrgyzstan. Last February, when
Kazakhstan stopped supplying electricity to parts of
Kyrgyzstan, the Kyrgyz prime minister threatened to
leave parts of Kazakhstan without water for irrigation.
Hence experts warn that competition for water can only
increase in the region.
Therefore, the
Siberia-Central Asia Canal could be instrumental in
easing tensions over scarce water resources in the
volatile region - all that is needed is the political
will - and the little matter of about $20 billion.
(©2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights
reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
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