No. 19 (103) December 2005

RESULTS OF THE PARTICIPATION OF ICWC DELEGATION IN THE 19TH ICID CONGRESS

BEIJING, SEPTEMBER 10-18, 2005

The 19th ICID Congress was very impressive and interesting event, which was well organized by the Chinese NCID with the support of the Chinese Government, Ministry of Water Resources, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Science and Technology. In welcoming speech of His Excellency Vice Prime Minister Hu Liang to the Congress and report of Minister of Water Resources His Excellency Wang Shuchench, great and really stunning results of development in water sector and land reclamation in the country were demonstrated.

The main issues of the Congress were considered at two plenary sessions on issue 52 “Improvement of water and soil management to raise efficiency of irrigated lands” and issue 53 “Harmonization of coexistence with floods”, and a number of symposia and sessions “Water quality and salinity control”, “Legal and organizational conclusions”, “History of irrigation”, “Forum of young professionals”, “On-farm irrigation technology”, “Special law on preparation for the 4th World Water Forum”.

Over the last 50 years, irrigation has made an invaluable contribution to solving problems of hunger and food shortages all over the world that has made it possible to reduce the number of the starving from 840 million including 200 million children to 700 million for ten years only. Yet, the growth of population from 6.45 billion at present to 7.85 billion in 2025 and almost 9 billion in 2050 makes the task set by Millennium Development Goals in elimination of hunger and poverty very problematic. Under these conditions of development, irrigation improvement is the primary task for developing countries, and only it can enable to quickly and successively solve these problems. A typical example can be given by China and India, two countries with the largest population in the world, which practically coped with hunger and became large exporters of grain and other agricultural produce on their own. Bangladesh which in 1970 could not feed 70 million people, but now almost supplies 130 million people owing to mainly irrigated farming, is coming near to self-sufficiency. In his report, ICID President Keizrul Ben Abdulla noted several necessary ways to feed the world:

• to aim at further increase of agricultural crop yields through organizational measures and scientific achievements, try to continue the yield growth that was reached over the last 40 years (grain, for example, from 1.4 t/ha to 2.8 t/ha). Chinese geneticists give good examples in this direction again, having increased production of dry- and disease-resistant varieties of cotton and rice for the recent years, owing to which the production of cotton is expected to increase by 25% as compared with the past years;
• develop new irrigation massifs where it is possible depending on water and land resources;
• improve water use efficiency;
• involve farmers in water management and rational use, abridging governmental interference by creating conditions (financial, technological, organizational) for their successful operation;
• giving more attention to using positive experience of improving rain-fed land use productivity;
• applying IWRM in water sector, especially in irrigation.

The current situation in the world led to some overestimation of positions of international financial institutions to investments in water sector and irrigation. Earlier the amount of annual investments in our sector exceeded US$1.5 billion, then it reduced to 300 million a year, but now the limit permanently increases, having reached US$1 billion (this analysis is given in the key paper of senior adviser of the World Bank Salah Dargauti. “Let me briefly tell you about 3 latest interesting developments in our activity in water resources management in agriculture (WRMA) under the aegis of the World Bank.

Firstly, credits for irrigation and drainage helped to rehabilitate them in the recent years. Furthermore, they exceeded the grade US$1 billon in the financial year 2005.

Actually, the exact amount of financial credits for the financial year 2005 is US$1.069 million (for information, the financial year of the World Bank ends on 30 June).

Secondly, that is most important, the character of our activities in WRMA is in the process of dynamic development. We are moving toward the new purpose that WRMA itself is not an end point, but a process of resource management to provide one of necessary materials for food production, rural development, water resources management and the environment. Really, in the context of credit portfolio in the financial year 2005, irrigation and drainage were the key entry point for the following activities:

• Water resources management and reforms in irrigation sector (for example, the projects in India for water sector restructuring in Madkhiya Pradesh and for water sector improvement in Makharashtra).
• Watersheds and land and water resources management (for example, the project in Iran for integrated water and land resources management in Alborze).
• Agriculture strengthening (almost all the projects).

At the meetings dedicated to irrigated farming improvement at farm level, in their papers, Prof. L.S. Pereira and А. Clement first stated the necessity to draw attention to availability of the most significant potential for improving irrigation productivity through improving the uniformity of background for soil fertility and, at the same time, interaction of irrigation and drainage. On the other hand, timely water supply to farms should be ensured by appropriate coordination of activities at all levels of water hierarchy and water requirements of farmers. It is possible to teach farmers to rationally use water, but first of all it is necessary to ensure sustainable and sufficient water supply to them at required time. The results of Prof. Pereira in China and our results in Fergana Valley were given as examples.

The meeting of the ICID Working Group for the Aral Sea basin was held under the chairmanship of Honorary ICID President А. Shady. At that, it was noted that the participation of Central Asian countries in ICID activities should be extended, and a number of remarks was made:

• poor participation of NCID representatives in the working groups, in particular for water conservation, technical activities, farmer involvement, in groups of researchers, in Forum of the young. Even Bakhodyr Yusupov included in the membership of the Asian Working Group on behalf of Uzbekistan is not participating in activities;
• non-payment of fees by Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.

A Protocol on Cooperation was signed with the group for Lake Chad, which has the same critical consequences of water level decline as of the Aral Sea.

The Russian delegation (Prof. L. Kirecheva) presented a paper on the prospect and significance of the possibility to transfer a part of Siberian river flows to Central Asia for Russia. It was pointed out that under the conditions of increase in Siberian river flows due to climate change, the northern areas of Russia are more interested in water withdrawal so as to be saved from possible floods and inundation of the present richest oil fields in Northern Siberia.

The working group for the Aral Sea appealed to the ICID leadership to support inclusion of Central Asian countries in the CPSP program.

MEETING OF ICWC DELEGATION WITH THE LEADERSHIP OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON IRRIGATION AND DRAINAGE

On 26 November 2005 Honorary President ICID Dr. А. Shady and Secretary General ICID Mr. Gopalakrishnan kindly invited representative of the ICWC delegation to the 12th Congress of IWRA (International Water Resources Association) to visit the ICID Headquarters.

Deputy Director of the Water Department at the Ministry of Agriculture, Water Resources and Processing Industry of the Kyrgyz Republic Mr. Y. Djusumatov, Deputy Minister of Land Reclamation and Water Resources of Tajikistan Mr. А. Zairov, Chief of Financial-Economic Division at the Water Department of the Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources of Uzbekistan Dr. S. Dusmatov, Director of SIC ICWC Prof. V.A. Dukhovny, Manager of External Division at SIC ICWC Ms О. Usmanova participated in the meeting.

Secretary General ICID Mr. М. Gopalakrishnan told the participants about the activities of the ICID, which has since 1950 been the largest non-governmental voluntary nonprofit association of countries engaged in irrigation and drainage. The ICID network includes 105 countries, which have 75% of irrigated areas in the world. The ICID carries out great activity for information exchange, involvement of water professionals in water-related actions, jointly make reports, reviews, analyses, and searches ways for more rational water and land use in irrigated and drained farming, as well as flood control. The main organizational unit of the ICID is working groups, which include representatives of different countries, voluntarily expressing a wish to participate in their activities. Mr. Gopalakrishnan and Mr. Shady noted the active work of the special group for the Aral Sea, but at the same time expressed regret that the representatives from Central Asia are weakly participating in the activities of these groups, in particular: only representatives of Uzbekistan are participating in the activities of the group for drainage, and V.A. Dukhovny, as Vice President ICID, is involved in the ICID Committee of Governors, Strategic Committee and IPTRID Council.

The representatives of NCID namely Deputy Minister of Land Reclamation and Water Resources of Tajikistan Mr. A. Zairov, Deputy Director of the Water Department of the Kyrgyz Republic Mr. Y. Djusumatov, and Chief of Financial-Economic Division of the Water Department of Uzbekistan S.Dusmatov told the participants about the activities of the NCID in the their countries.

In his speech, V.A. Dukhovny pointed out that “participating in the ICID activities since 1966, we always noted the big role of this organization in establishing close interaction between foreign water organizations and the former Soviet republics. Practically, for our specialists at that time the ICID was a single window, which enabled to reach the tendency of the modern development in water sector, irrigation and drainage, and simultaneously establish cooperation with foreign specialists on these matters. These contacts were an incomparable help to specialists in Central Asian Republics in the process of achieving independence and stand-alone establishment of international water relations.

Hence, it is necessary to draw attention (and it was promised by the ICWC representatives at the meeting) to nominating in the near future a candidate on behalf of the national committees for including them in the working group. Especially, it is necessary to take part in working groups for drainage, on-farm irrigation, public participation and strategic planning.

During the discussion, it was pointed out that it is necessary to select specialists knowing English so as to prepare specialists and a “long bench“ that are usually prepared in all teams, which worry about their future.