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TAJIKISTAN’S WATER RESOURCES: AN INSTRUMENT OF NATIONAL AND REGIONAL POLITICSTimur VALAMAT-ZADEH
Timur Valamat-zadeh, Assistant to the minister of economics and foreign economic relations of Tajikistan
Today, the ever-present problem of water distribution in Central Asia has reached its critical limit: population is growing faster than food and water production. Back in 1959 Central Asia was home to 14.5 million—today there are over 40 million living there. Counted together with Kazakhstan the figure reaches 60 million. The situation is further aggravated by a hint at economic revival.
Mutually advantageous principles of water distribution which means that people will have good potable water and that agriculture, industry and power production will have enough water to cover their needs are one of the cornerstones of peaceful, democratic, and prosperous countries into which (we hope) the region will develop with time.
Central Asian agriculture is existing in continental climate with scant precipitation in summer and a great amount of solar radiation. There are about 15 million hectares of irrigable land, 12 million hectares of which can be used to raise cotton. About 9 million hectares of it stretch along the Amu Darya, and 6 million, along the Syr Darya. Irrigated agriculture in their basins has a future only if the runoff is regulated on a seasonal and compensating basis by building large hydropower electric stations and power-driven lift irrigation.
The region potentially rich in energy resources boasts of considerable, though unevenly distributed resources of gas, oil, coal, hydro- and solar energy. Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan have gas, oil, and coal; Kyrgyzstan has a large amount of water power while Tajikistan is rich in water power and in large amounts of high grade coal.
Tajikistan is situated from 300 to 7,495 m above the sea level; there are 8,492 glaciers in its mountains that cover over 9,000 sq km. They, and the glaciers on the Kyrgyzstan territory supply Central Asia with water at all seasons. They are especially important during long and hot summers. In fact, their area is larger than the area under crop: they cover 6 percent of the entire territory and contain 500 c km of excellent water. The Pamir alone has 360 c km of water resources which is 30 times more than the annual runoff of all rivers in Tajikistan. There are also about 1,300 lakes in the republic, their combined area being 705 sq km. They contain 44 c km of water. The total length of 947 rivers (each over 10 km long) is over 28,500 km; the average annual runoff of surface waters is 52.2 c km.
There are also man-made reservoirs (Nurek, Kairakkum, Kattasay, Muminabad and many smaller ones). Taken together natural and artificial water sources provide nearly 70 percent of water summer supply in Central Asia: they are either situated in the republic or flow………………..
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