DOES SIC ICWC “COIN MONEY” OR WORK?
Tilting at windmills or against anonymous denunciators being well matched with Quixote. When my friend showed me a paper of mysterious Kara-Kalpak T. Dusbayev (the matter concerns the paper “Golden pool. Who "coins money" at expense of the Aral projects?” published on the website at CentrAsia.org on 27 May 2006 – editor’s note), he himself expressed what flitted through my mind while reading this opus: “The dogs bark, but the caravan goes on”.
For my long life experience, I met too many wonderful people, toilers, those who by great eastern tradition bring to the world humaneness and kindness, in which all Central Asian peoples are so rich. I am always accustomed to that the fact that the world is divided into those who work and those who pretend to do something. The latter usually succeed in searching for sins of others and throwing mud at others.
There would have been no need to draw attention to such slander, if it were not a damage that could be done not to my name, it is hard to dirty up it for those who know me and who worked with me, but to the whole water community of Central Asian countries, which has for the recent 15 years developed and successfully maintained conflict-free water supply in five Central Asian countries.
Right after the USSR’s collapse, the Ministers of Water Resources of five Central Asian states signed an Agreement between Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan on Cooperation in Joint Management of Interstate Water Resources Use and Protection that established an Interstate Commission for Water Coordination in the Aral Sea basin (ICWC) on 18 February 1992 with a view to joint water resources use management in the basin. The Commission was founded on the basis of BWO ‘Amudarya’ and BWO ‘Syrdarya’ organized in 1987 and the Scientific-Information Center separated from the SANIIRI Institute. This Agreement met confirmation in formation of an International Fund for the Aral Sea Saving that was established by the Decision of the Heads of Central Asian States not in 2003 but in 1993 consisting of two commissions, ICWC and Interstate Commission for Sustainable Development (ICSD), and Executive Committee (EC) IFAS.
The obligations were exactly allocated among IFAS organizations: ICWC that consists of two BWOs and SIC ICWC is responsible for water resources planning and distribution, development of their management and raising of technical level of water use; ICSD is responsible for improvement of environmental situation in the Aral Sea basin; and EC IFAS is responsible for coordination of actions under the regulations and statutes confirmed by the Heads of State. Taking the rotation of EC IFAS location and membership into account, the latter sequentially passed the period of management by Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, and all of them provided permanent assistance to cooperation, joint preparation and initiation of donor projects, strengthening of legal and institutional mechanism for cooperation without interference of the Executive Committee in affairs of the ICWC and ICSD, but with the permanent assistance in submitting necessary solutions to the Board members.
In the world, there are over 240 commissions, committees, boards and other institutions responsible for activities of two or more countries in transboundary waters. However, only less than ten of them accounts for direct water resources planning, distribution and use control, protection and development of water basins. The ICWC in the Aral Sea basin, according to fullness of responsibility, carrying out not only planning, but also daily water distribution among thousands of water inlets in the five countries of the region, is really a unique organization, which mainly functions owing to the experience and skills in joint work acquired by the community of water specialists from the five countries and, above all, owing to good will of the Heads of Central Asian states and governments and understanding by all the key persons of that shared water resources can be managed only together. However, the inertia of the past unity is continually put on trials by new market trends, new socio-economic conditions and priorities, and a permanently changing environmental and political situation. Under these conditions, the ICWC and its bodies should fulfill a major task to support and improve the cooperation between the countries toward effective use of water and related natural resources.
For 15 years of functioning, there have been 3 extremely dry years and 4 wet years without any interstate conflicts so strenuously propagandized by those who love pungent feelings. The total water withdrawal from river reduced by 8–10 km3 and is still reducing.
To achieve these objectives and results, the ICWC, in addition to regular quarterly meetings where numerous issues related to mutual interests, current and future water distribution and use are discussed, continually works on technical upgrading, water use and management.
These activities are carried out in the area of relationship with the world community, raising awareness of water specialists and water users of achievements and trends in leading countries, international water rights, and promoting the preparation of agreements, through roundtables on development of joint approaches and better understanding of partner interests.
At the first stage, the ICWC received great assistance from donors such as the European Union, World Bank, UNDP and so on. Under the Decision of the Heads of State, an Aral Sea Basin Program (ASBP) – 1 was developed in 1994. Most projects under this program were grounded and prepared by the SIC ICWC. These are the European Union’s WARMAP–1 and WARMAP–2, and the Global Environmental Facility’s Project mentioned by Mr. Dusbayev. However, it was not performed and handled by the SIC and V.A. Dukhovny, but by the EC Interstate Council and EC IFAS, and the project, with a cost of US$21 million in fact, was managed, in components, by members of the EC IFAS of the first two convocations. By the way, while a part managed by representative of Uzbekistan S.T. Pernabekov – Lake Sudochie, the project of which was implemented under my direction, as well as dams safety (K.B. Balliyev, Turkmenistan), water conservation (M.O. Ospanov, Kazakhstan) were successfully completed, one can not say the same regarding Component “Transboundary Monitoring”.
in preparing joint actions of Central Asian countries the SIC ICWC should place emphasis on three directions: training specialists, creating an information system to ensure confidence and openness among the countries and developing advanced technological methods for current water sector in joint regional projects. A considerable impact on maintaining the cooperation within the framework of not only the ICWC, but also the IFAS as a whole was made by the activities of the ICWC Training Center (ICWC TC) established at the SIC with the support of the Canadian International Development Agency. For 5 years of its work, with the participation of all ICWC members, advanced training of more than 2000 water specialists from the basin countries was organized, 5 branch offices for training farmers in Osh, Urgench, Khodjent, Andijan and Fergana were set up, and all this was done using only 350’000 US dollars!!! Only a blind man or a wrecker cannot notice all this and understand the significance of such work for water cooperation.
Thanks to the foundation laid in the WARMAP–1 and WARMAP–2, and a large assistance from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, a unique regional information system, uniting 2 basin systems, information from national information networks and other information sources, was created. The application of GIS and distant methods enabled to prepare a portal www.cawater-info.net for use of water specialists that continually elucidates all news, events in water-related areas in the region.
The joint work of the SIC ICWC and IWMI provided insight to and enabled to promote introduction of integrated water resources management. A pilot project implemented by the ICWC with the support of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation on three canals in Fergana Valley, made it possible to settle, in a new way, hydro egoism through public participation, and organize not only WUAs, but also public management of Canal Boards that arrange joint management of canals and the whole water hierarchy within a new technological framework. The collaboration with the Global Water Partnership for Caucasus and Central Asia established on the initiative of the ICWC sharply extended the area for involving specialists and NGOs in learning and introducing IWRM, owing to which, along with the initiative of the SIC ICWC to introduce IWRM through pilot projects into Osh province in Kyrgyzstan, Sogd province in Tajikistan, Andijan and Fergana provinces in Uzbekistan, a number of pilot IWRM projects were developed and are successfully being implemented: National Plan for IWRM in Kazakhstan, basing National Plans for IWRM in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. All these projects and feasibility studies for IWRM in lowlands were not carried out by the SIC, but by the participants of further introduction themselves. The SIC and GWP consider that their task is to ground projects, and the job of national teams is to perform them with involvement of a minimum number of foreign specialists under the control of donors, and they show really outstanding results!
The work of the SIC ICWC and BWO Syrdarya on control system automation is a good example. We did a feasibility study of these activities in 1998 under the ASBP–1, based on which first a headwork at Druzhba Canal was automated with the assistance of Canadian specialists, then the USAID, under the active support from Swiss specialists, managed to automate other 8 structures at the Syrdarya river, as a result the major water outlets from the river are almost completely controlled distantly.
For example, the automation of Uchkurgan waterworks facility made it possible, using only 240’000 dollars, to raise the precision of water distribution from this facility up to ±2% against ±10% earlier under water fluctuations at the head reach of this 40-stage structure with a capacity of 150–300 m3/sec a day!!!
Through the participation in bids of the European Union, INTAS, NATO and other donors, the SIC ICWC is trying to continually prepare projects and submit them for allocating grants. Using such grants, a preliminary feasibility study for a set of measures aimed at improving the situation in the Amudarya delta was done; a similar project was prepared, which is now being completed in the Syrdarya delta and not implemented by the SIC, but by Kazakh colleagues. 2 expeditions on the Aral bed enabling to identify ways for stabilizing landscape in this new desert were organized together with German colleagues.
We are proud of that the projects initiated by us:
- enabled to apply new knowledge in the region;
- involved a few thousands of people in the collaboration with the foreign specialists;
- extended knowledge and aspiration of our specialists to cooperate;
- and demonstrated to the world that we can work in a friendly, solidary, organized and skillful manner.
I would like to give some figures to those who wants to know how many specialists of local and foreign nationalities participate in the projects initiated by the SIC: 53 Uzbeks, 20 Kyrgyzes, 22 Tajiks, 10 Russians, 2 Tatars, 2 Jews, 1 Korean and 1 Armenian take part in the IWRM-Fergana Project funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.
The ICWC and its organizations are members of various international organizations, and we are proud of this, because the ICWC proudly bears the name of Central Asian water specialists in the arena of the world water community!
I would like to thank those who understand this. Time will come when spiteful critics will understand this as well.
Prof. V.A. Dukhovny,
Director SIC ICWC
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