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2 Power
nexus skews Kyrgyz dam
demand By Eelke P Kraak
The government of Kyrgyzstan has embarked
on an ambitious hydropower development program on
the transboundary Syr Darya River, which has
provoked strong opposition from downstream
Uzbekistan.
The program is driven by the
alignment of actual energy concerns with interests
of the national hydropower elites and the global
politics of project finance, which provides a
logic for dams that may exacerbate existing
geopolitical tensions across the region.
On August 30, 2010, then-president of the
Kyrgyz Republic, Roza Otunbayeva, travelled to a
sparsely inhabited stretch of the Naryn
River to inaugurate the
Kambarata-II dam and hydropower plant, amid much
pomp and circumstance.
It marked the
completion of a project whose construction had
begun during Soviet rule in the mid-1980s, but
that had halted after independence in 1991 because
of lack of funds. With an installed capacity of
200 MW, the Kambarata-II is the first in a series
of six to eight dams on the Naryn River that
Kyrgyzstan's national power utility plans to
construct over the next decade.
A little
farther upstream, the Kambarata-I is planned, with
an installed capacity 10 times that of its
recently completed smaller sibling. The plans for
the Kambarata-I also date from the Soviet period.
When completed it will be the largest dam of the
entire Naryn-Syr Darya River system (hereafter Syr
Darya), in terms of height as well as power
generating capacity.
The electricity
generated by these two hydropower dams ought to
address the severe energy shortages that have been
haunting Kyrgyzstan during the last decade,
notably in the winter period. The winter of
2009-2010 saw forced power outages of over 12
hours per day in parts of the country.
Academics, diplomats, and national energy
experts have raised serious questions about the
value of these dams. At the moment, the
Kambarata-II is operating at only a third of its
capacity because two out of three turbines can
only be installed when the larger dam upstream is
completed to regulate the river flow. Meanwhile,
financing the latter has proved problematic given
prohibitive costs and doubtful balance between
costs and benefits.
Moreover, another dam
on the river would be very controversial. The
waters of the Syr Darya River are heavily
contested by the different riparian states.
President Islam Karimov of downstream Uzbekistan
has spoken out against hydropower developments in
the upstream states of Kyrgyzstan and neighboring
Tajikistan, fearing that more dams may compromise
its water supply. Tension over the operation of
dams has arisen in the past, leading to much
sabre-rattling, economic sanctions and the closure
of borders.
The entire dam-building
project of the Kyrgyz government has raised
numerous questions. What is the logic that drives
the desire for these dams? Who would pay the
excessive costs of the new dam, given the rather
low economic viability?
But the most
critical question remains: what will the new dams
mean for the geopolitics of the Syr Darya River,
and in particular the tension between Uzbekistan
and Kyrgyzstan? Before one can address these
questions, it is important to examine the
tumultuous history of water management in Central
Asia.
Environmental and geopolitical
turmoil The Kambarata cascade is by no
means the first hydropower intervention in the
Aral Sea basin of which the Syr Darya covers half
the drainage area. Hundreds of dams have been
constructed since the 1930s as well as a plethora
of reservoirs, irrigation canals, and other water
management structures. These developments were
part of the Soviet hydropower mission, a
modernisation plan that made the conquest of
nature an ideological imperative. By taming the
wild Syr Darya and Amu Darya Rivers, it was
thought, agricultural output could be greatly
increased.
Central Asia was the cotton belt
of the Russian and Soviet empires and abundant
state resources were directed to sustain and
expand the large-scale irrigation networks that
made production possible. The Hunger Steppe in
contemporary Uzbekistan was transformed from an
uninhabited plain into a cotton factory of 300,000
hectares; the Kara Kum canal in Turkmen territory
diverted almost 13 cubic kilometers per year from
the Amu Darya to irrigate the desert; and the
largest of the lot, Nikita Khrushchev's Virgin
Lands Campaign, dramatically increased grain
production in the Kazakh Socialist Republic in
just a few years.
But the costs have been
high. The Aral Sea, terminal lake of the Syr Darya
and Amu Darya Rivers has shrunk to less than 10%
of its 1960 volume. The consequences are dire:
dessication, polluting dust storms and declining
life expectancies in the area immediately
surrounding the lake.
The setbacks for the
Uzbek and Kazakh economies have never been
precisely measured, but they appear to have been
enormous. By taming the rivers and controlling
nature, ruling elites in Moscow and Tashkent
created one of the worst man-made environmental
disasters in history.
After independence
of the Central Asian states in 1991, a wider
geopolitical problem was added to the
environmental mess. Rather than being a domestic
river in an integrated economic system, the Syr
Darya became an international river flowing
through four states with widely diverging economic
and political interests: Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan,
Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan.
Initially
there was hope that these new states would
cooperate to address the region's environmental
and political problems. But little has been done
to alleviate the water problems of Central Asia
during the past 20 years. Instead, tensions over
water rights seem to have risen, notably between
downstream Uzbekistan and upstream Kyrgyzstan.1
The operation of the Kyrgyz Toktogul dam
and reservoir - the largest in the river system
until Kambarata-I is completed - has been the
central problem. It has multiple functions: it is
both the main supplier of water for irrigation in
Uzbekistan and the source of more than 90% of
Kyrgyzstan's electricity. The problem is that
Kyrgyzstan wants to discharge water from the
reservoir in winter to generate power when demand
for electricity is highest, whereas Uzbekistan
wants the water to be discharged in summer, when
it is needed for irrigation.
Disputes over
the timing of water discharge have brought the two
countries to the brink of conflict. Polemical
works such as Robert Kaplan's 2001 The Coming
Anarchy or Thomas Homer-Dixon's 1999
Environment, Scarcity and Violence, have
warned of violent conflict over scarce water
resources, [2] but their works have been sharply
criticized by social scientists studying
transborder river politics.
The idea of
water wars has remained influential in policy
circles nonetheless. A 2011 report by the US
Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs observed that
"we cannot expect [Central Asia] to continue to
avoid water wars in perpetuity." Theoretically, a
new dam upstream could ease the tension.
More dams, more power? At first
sight it seems that the new Kambarata dams just
upstream of the Soviet-era Toktogul dam have the
potential to satisfy both the Uzbeks and Kyrgyz.
Former president Kurmanbek Bakiyev said during a
regional summit in 2009: "Implementation of [the
Kambarata project] not only satisfies our
republic's energy needs but will also allow the
Toktogul to operate in an irrigation regime which
our regional partners are interested in."
According to economic analysis
conducted by the World Bank, a win-win solution is
actually possible without the expensive
construction of more dams: recognising the
economic value of water allows for the
optimisation of existing dam operations.
Kyrgyzstan could discharge water for Uzbek
irrigation in summer, in exchange for nominal
payments to cover the costs of an alternative
electricity supply in winter. Either way, the
solution depends on political cooperation.
In fact, the Kambarata plans seem to have
aggravated tensions between the riparian states.
The regional cooperation process that aims to
formulate a binding legal framework has been
deadlocked over disagreement on basic principles.
Uzbek officials accuse Kyrgyzstan of wanting to
sell the water of an international river. Indeed,
the rather unsubstantiated fear downstream is that
Kyrgyzstan will not use the Kambarata dam to
foster cooperation, but will attempt to extend its
control over the river flow and blackmail the
downstream states.
Independent experts
have stated that the new cascade is also unlikely
to solve the energy crisis in Kyrgyzstan. The
energy system itself is horribly inefficient. Some
claim that half the produced electricity is either
lost or stolen. Moreover, there are three key
imbalances in the system.
Kyrgyzstan
relies for 90% of its electricity on hydropower
facilities, which in turn depend on benevolent
rainfall. These dams are in the southern part of
the country, while the vast majority of the
population and industry is in the north. Finally,
the hydrology of the river allows the plants to
generate most electricity when water levels are
highest: which is in the summer following glacier
and snow melt in the Tien Shan
mountains.
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