Mountainous Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are among the world’s most water-abundant countries. At the same time, fossil-fuel-rich Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan largely depend on the water outside their borders to supply the agricultural sector with water for irrigation. Energy, water, and land management have been key factors that characterise inter-state relations in Central Asia since independence in the early 1990s.
With a growing population in an already climatically vulnerable region, ensuring a co-ordinated approach to the management of water, energy, and land resources will be essential.
This project aims to demonstrate the benefits of mainstreaming the ‘nexus solutions’ to help countries in Central Asia achieve long-term climate and development goals. It seeks to improve economic growth and well-being by ensuring the water, energy, and land-use nexus approaches are aligned to achieve cross-sectoral, transboundary, and regional collaboration.
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan has significant fossil fuel deposits and renewable energy potential, yet some western regions in the country are not connected to the national power grid. Food security is high, but the quality of agricultural land has been deteriorating in recent years. The central and southern regions (except for mountainous areas) are arid zones, susceptible to rising temperatures due to climate change. The central and northern regions experience regular flooding. Since seven out of the eight river basins are transboundary (44% of total water is formed outside the republican boundaries), domestic water security can be guaranteed only by sustainable management of natural resources at the regional level and in partnership with neighbouring countries.
Kyrgyzstan
Kyrgyzstan has abundant water and hydropower resources. However, given its geographical features, it is often overly expensive to convert the mountainous terrain to agricultural use. As a result, the country sees an increasing reliance on food imports in the context of rapid population growth. While water quality and availability are high, they have been gradually undermined by ageing infrastructure, mining, and agricultural activities. A severe drought that hit Central Asia in 2021 resulted in a substantial number of livestock die-offs and shortages of irrigation water, especially in the northern part of the country. The industrial sector has been developing rapidly but is highly energy intensive due to low technology and below-cost recovery electricity tariffs.
Tajikistan
As a mountainous country with limited arable land and reliance on food imports, the high forecast population growth (69% to 2050) poses additional pressures on food security in the country. Power generation and demand are highly concentrated on hydropower that accounts for 93% of the power generation mix. One large industrial consumer, an aluminium smelter, uses about 43% of total power supply. Although Tajikistan has significant untapped hydropower resources, the country suffers from power outages in winter. Large power losses in transmission and distribution (i.e. around 17%) accentuate the mismatch between supply and demand.
While the country currently has abundant water resources, the increasing glacier retreat due to climate change is likely to have considerable negative impacts on water availability. The glacier melting also poses risks related to dam safety in Tajikistan where three-quarters of the population live in areas that are prone to natural disasters.
Turkmenistan
As a downstream country, Turkmenistan is highly dependent on water reserves formed outside its borders, in particular, the Amu Darya River. Expansion of current agricultural land is a challenge due to the large desert areas (i.e. 80% of the land is classified as desert) and pressures on water reserves. Water desalination capacity has been recently added, and the use of groundwater reserves is being considered. Measures to promote the deployment of renewable energy sources, which currently have a very limited role in the country’s energy mix, are being introduced. Despite such policy development, the abundant domestic energy sources (notably natural gas) and low fuel prices are a major challenge to incentivising investments in renewable energy projects and energy efficiency measures.
Uzbekistan
Most of Uzbekistan’s water supply relies on transboundary water resources; hence agreements on water allocation with upstream neighbours are critical. Pumped irrigation and a degrading land bank contribute to the low yields and profitability in the agricultural sector, which accounted for 28% of GDP in 2019. While Uzbekistan is rich in energy reserves (natural gas, renewable energy, and planned nuclear power), the country still imports hydropower energy from its neighbours to support water availability in the growing seasons.
