Transboundary Rivers And International Relations In Central Asia

Central Asia is located in arid and semi-arid zones, where water resources are considered as irreplaceable, strategic resources. Since the main rivers in this region are transboundary, the exploration of these rivers has an impact not only on the ecological environment and socio-economic development of the region, but also on national security.The water resources of transboundary rivers in Central Asia are relatively abundant but distributed rather unequally. The upper-stream countries enjoy a large quantity of water resources but use only a small proportion of them, while the lower-stream countries with much less water resources produced on their territories use a fairly larger proportion of water due to the massive scale of irrigated agriculture. During the Soviet period, the strong central government coordinated the interests of the upper-stream and lower-stream countries which have different natural resources by setting a barter system where water and energy resources are exchanged, and this was basically effective. However, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the newly independent states disobey the rules of the former barter system and only seek their own national interests instead of cooperating regionally. There have been frequent conflicts among the five countries caused by water allocation, the contradiction between hydro-electricity generation in the upper stream and irrigation in the lower stream, and water pollution. Although these conflicts are not large in scale at present, they tend to become more intense in future.Central Asian countries have made some efforts on co-management of transboundary rivers, such as holding summits, signing agreements, establishing institutions for the administration of these rivers, etc. The international society has also played an active role in such a process. However, the outcome is not satisfactory as most of the signed agreements are not implemented. The key here is that Central Asian countries lack political mutual trust, which is not likely to change in the near future, nor is the co-management of transboundary rivers in Central Asia.This thesis begins with an introduction of the geographical environment and the hydrological characteristics of Central Asian transboundary rivers, followed by an analysis of the region-scale environmental impact as well as socio-economic impact of the exploration of water resource of these rivers. Then the conflicts and cooperation on transboundary rivers in Central Asia are studied systematically, and conclusion is made based on the common practice of the co-management of transboundary rivers which has been recognized internationally.