Central Asia does not lack water - it lacks preparedness for scarcity

Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.uz) — Nearly four in five people in Central Asia depend on transboundary water systems. Severe droughts recur every five to six years in parts of the region, while the water sector faces an investment shortfall of up to $2.6 billion. The question is no longer only how much water the region will have left, but whether its infrastructure will be able to function when less water is available.

Central Asia Already Knows Where Many of Its Vulnerabilities Lie

The water debate in Central Asia is entering a new phase. The region no longer lacks evidence that climate pressure is intensifying. The much harder question is whether institutions, infrastructure and investment can adapt quickly enough to risks that are already emerging in water management, agriculture and energy.

Estimates discussed at the Regional Ecological Summit (RES-2026) and the Central Asia Climate Change Conference (CACCC-2026) in Astana illustrate the scale of this vulnerability. Around 81% of the region’s population depends on transboundary water systems originating in the Tien Shan and Pamir-Alai. The degree to which individual countries depend on water originating beyond their national borders, however, varies substantially. This makes water security a regional infrastructure challenge that cannot be addressed solely through the domestic policies of individual states.

This dependence is particularly high in downstream countries. According to estimates presented at the conferences, external water dependency reaches 97% in Turkmenistan and around 80% in Uzbekistan; Kazakhstan also depends substantially on transboundary inflows.

These indicators matter because they demonstrate the limits of purely national adaptation: a country may modernize canals, pumping stations and reservoirs, but the reliability of the system as a whole will still depend on processes taking place upstream.

Drought Must Be Planned for as a Recurring Systemic Risk

The need to change the management model becomes even clearer when drought is treated not as an exceptional emergency, but as a recurring condition that must be incorporated into planning. Estimates by the International Water Management Institute indicate that approximately 30% of Central Asia’s territory has a drought probability of 50% or higher. In parts of the region, severe droughts recur every five to six years, while drought accounts for up to 70% of the total number of people affected by emergencies in the region.

At this frequency, responding only after a crisis begins becomes an expensive strategy. Governments and basin organizations need to know in advance which indicators trigger emergency measures, how reservoir operating regimes will change, how competing agricultural and energy needs will be balanced, and what information countries commit to sharing. Without pre-agreed procedures, every low-water year risks turning into another round of negotiations under political and economic pressure.

The infrastructure implications are equally important. Drought preparedness is not only about forecasting. It requires water storage and conveyance systems capable of operating under greater variability, digital monitoring, reliable hydrometeorological data, and irrigation networks that can reduce avoidable losses. In other words, climate adaptation increasingly needs to be embedded directly into the physical and operational architecture of water management.

Transboundary Dependence Creates an Economic Incentive Problem

Central Asia’s water geography creates a persistent mismatch between where costs arise and where benefits accrue. Upstream states maintain reservoirs and hydropower infrastructure capable of regulating river flow, while downstream economies derive substantial benefits from summer water releases for irrigation. As climate variability increases, fixed allocation mechanisms become less resilient because the economic value of water storage, timing of releases and flow regulation also changes.

At CACCC-2026, former Kyrgyz foreign minister Alikbek Dzhekshenkulov highlighted this asymmetry from the Kyrgyz perspective: Kyrgyzstan generates approximately 47% of the Syr Darya’s flow through the Naryn and Kara Darya river systems, while receiving less than 2% of the basin flow allocated under existing mechanisms. Regardless of the political interpretation of these figures, the underlying problem is clear: cooperation becomes more difficult when the costs of providing regional water services and the economic benefits they create are distributed among different parties.

This is why projects such as Kambarata-1 HPP matter for more than electricity generation. Joint investment can create a platform on which countries can define more clearly the value of water storage, seasonal regulation, electricity supply and downstream water reliability. The objective is not to turn water itself into a commodity, but to make the services created by coordinated infrastructure sufficiently measurable for negotiations over the distribution of costs, responsibilities and benefits.

The Investment Gap Is Becoming Part of the Water-Security Problem

Physical infrastructure will also require substantially more capital. According to regional estimates presented at RES-2026, Central Asia’s water sector faces a financing gap of around $2–2.6 billion. Aging irrigation infrastructure compounds the problem: in some systems in Kazakhstan, irrigation efficiency remains at around 55%, while water losses can reach 40%.

These figures show that the region’s adaptation challenge is not simply a shortage of projects. It is also a problem of financing and project preparation. Modernization competes for capital amid regulatory uncertainty, currency risks, limited access to long-term finance and underdeveloped risk-sharing mechanisms. Instruments discussed at the conferences that could help narrow this gap included climate guarantees, green investment funds, stronger ESG disclosure, blended finance and Islamic finance instruments.

The scale of the broader investment agenda is already substantial. According to a regional presentation at CACCC-2026, the World Bank’s active portfolio in Central Asia comprises 79 projects with total commitments of about $10.3 billion. Regional programs cover areas including water security, power-system connectivity, land restoration and climate resilience. An increasingly important question is whether individual investments can be structured as components of an integrated regional adaptation system rather than as isolated national projects.

Cooperation Has an Economic Value — and So Does Its Absence

Ultimately, economics may provide the strongest argument for a more practical regional model. According to World Bank estimates presented at CACCC-2026, insufficient cooperation in water management costs Central Asia at least $4.5 billion in foregone income. At the same time, expanded regional electricity trade could generate at least $15 billion in economic benefits.

These figures should not be treated as directly comparable categories. They nevertheless demonstrate the same fundamental principle: coordination has measurable economic value. Joint infrastructure, electricity trade, reservoir management and drought planning can create benefits that individual national systems cannot obtain as efficiently on their own.

This also changes the way adaptation itself should be discussed. Regional cooperation is often treated as a diplomatic objective, while infrastructure is seen as a technical investment issue. In Central Asia, the two are becoming increasingly difficult to separate. A reservoir operating rule, a cross-border transmission line, a shared drought indicator or an irrigation-modernization program can all alter the distribution of climate risk and economic value among countries.

Adaptation Needs a Working Model, Not Another Declaration

Central Asia does not lack regional institutions or political dialogue. The harder task is to turn cooperation into systems that continue to function under water scarcity. This requires common data standards, agreed drought thresholds, transparent reservoir operating rules, investment portfolios, financing mechanisms and a clear allocation of responsibilities before a crisis begins. These are precisely the kinds of practical elements embedded in the logic of the solutions presented at the conferences.

The region’s climate future will be shaped by glacier retreat, changes in river flow, extreme heat and increasingly unstable drought conditions. The economic consequences, however, will depend not only on how much water is available, but also on how efficiently it is stored, conveyed, allocated and managed across borders.

Central Asia’s main risk is no longer a lack of information about approaching water scarcity. The scale of transboundary dependence, recurrence of drought, infrastructure losses and the investment gap are already known to a significant degree.

What will be tested now is something else: the ability of governments to prepare the system before the next low-water year turns into a crisis. Canals and reservoirs must function under more variable flows, water-allocation rules must remain resilient under scarcity, and investment mechanisms must finance projects before an emergency occurs rather than after it.

The cost of delay is already measured in more than cubic metres of water. According to the World Bank, insufficient cooperation in water management deprives Central Asia of at least $4.5 billion in economic benefits. The next stage of regional adaptation will therefore be determined not by the number of new declarations on cooperation, but by whether its infrastructure and agreements can withstand the next serious water shortage.