ABSTRACT
Serious problems of water shortage are endemic to Central Asia.1 Rising population, reliance on hydro-power in certain states, and dependence on irrigation for growing cotton and other crops in others, have all resulted in a growing demand for water. Climate change, causing glacier melt and reduced snowfall in mountainous areas, poses a long-term threat to the security of supplies in an already arid region, while any increase in domestic or industrial pollution would reduce the availability of potable water. The Aral Sea disaster illustrates how mismanagement of water resources under the Soviet system produced environmental catastrophe on a grand scale, but the break-up of the Soviet Union has led to instability and tension between upstream and downstream states and put at risk the integrated management of water supplies across the whole of former Soviet Central Asia. This in turn has effects on the flow of water to neighbouring Afghanistan and China.
