Tajik-Uzbek Rift over Power Station Plan
Wednesday, 14 March, 2007
Tajik-Uzbek Rift over Power Station Plan
Wednesday, 14 March, 2007
On March 5, the Tajik news agency Khovar reported an announcement by China’s Eximbank that it will fund a 260 million US dollar project to construct a hydroelectric station on the Zeravshan river.
The Zeravshan runs from north-western Tajikistan to the Samarkand region of Uzbekistan. Samarkand is almost entirely dependent on the river’s water, and Uzbek state media report that a new power station would dramatically reduce the volume of water available for crop irrigation, cause a deterioration in water quality, and have a negative environmental impact on the Navoi and Bukhara regions as well as Samarkand itself.
Tajik energy officials say the Zeravshan station will only draw off a limited amount of water from the river, so Uzbekistan’s fears are unfounded.
A senior official from in the Tajik ministry for energy and industry told NBCentralAsia that the plant will be run by a dam across the river which will regulate the river flow over the course of a day rather than blocking it off altogether. “Tajikistan will not be able to check the water flow,” he said. “It will be just a dam, with no big reservoir.”
The official noted that although the power plant is a relatively low-cost project, it will make the Tajik part of the Zeravshan valley less dependent on electricity supplied by Uzbekistan.
According to Alikhon Latifi, director of the Tajik branch of the Central Asian Regional Environmental Centre, the dispute between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan stems from the fact that water consumption quotas established during Soviet times have not changed to meet current needs,
The Tajik economy is now growing, and the share of water it was apportioned in the Soviet period is no longer adequate, said Latifi, who believes the arrangements for sharing water river must be reviewed.
Georgy Petrov, a laboratory head at the Institute for Water, Hydroenergy and Ecology in Tajikistan, argues that the Zeravshan station will have a minimal impact on the river’s flow.
“Uzbekistan should be more tactful [when discussing] the Zeravshan, since 100 per cent of the water comes from Tajikistan yet 95 per cent of it is used by Uzbekistan.”
Anatoly Kholmatov, technical director with the executive committee at the International Fund to Save the Aral Sea, says there is an urgent need to develop a new regional economic strategy for shared water use. Countries located upstream and downstream need to coordinate and regulate their consumption over the course of a year.
“Regional interests should be based on the legitimate interests of each state,” added Kholmatov. “Countries further down the river course need water, but the upstream states cannot go without energy; they can’t simply give water away without getting anything in return.”
(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)
