This week, Tajikistan agreed to divert 315 million cubic meters of water from its Bahri Tojik reservoir, which powers the Qairoqqum hydropower plant in the northern Sughd province, to Kazakhstan, thereby supplying its neighbor to the north with crucial irrigation water in the hot months of summer.
According to Eurasianet, the water will be delivered via Kyrgyzstan to Kazakhstan’s Turkestan and Kyzylorda regions.
The deal was reportedly reached after a meeting in Dushanbe between Kazakhstan’s Ecology, Geology and Natural Resources Minister Magzum Mirzagaliyev and the Tajik Minister of Energy and Water Resources Daler Juma.
“Kazakhstan, in turn, will provide Tajikistan with material and technical support in the event of negative consequences from the depletion of the Bahri Tojik reservoir,” Mirzagaliyev said.
Eurasianet says that this year, levels of the Syr Darya River, one of Central Asia’s two main water courses, dropped by almost one-third, which is more than usual. Lack of water is threatening to plunge Kazakhstan’s south into drought and cause devastation to harvests in the area.
Climate experts are profoundly concerned about the impact that climate change is likely to have on Central Asia, but this current situation at least appears to be part of a cyclical trend. Low river levels were reported in Kazakhstan last year too, at the start of summer, which some specialists attributed to insufficiently high temperatures in the mountains, according to Eurasianet.
Although the Tajik-Kazakh agreement points to a positive model of cooperation, the expert consensus tends to be grimmer. In an interview with German broadcaster Deutsche Welle, Anatoly Ryabtsev, director of Kazgiprovodkhoz, a formerly state-controlled body that designs hydroelectric dams and other riparian infrastructure, forecast that upstream nations would in future likely make supplying their own needs a priority over providing for neighbors.
