Feb. 22 (Bloomberg) — Tajikistan, which will host a United
Nations summit on international water in August, is negotiating
with neighbors to end a feud in the Amu Darya River basin where
it plans to build the tallest hydroelectric dam.
Efforts by the Central Asian nation to strike an agreement
over energy and irrigation water use have so far been
unsuccessful, Sirodjidin Mukhridinovich Aslov, Tajikistan’s
ambassador to the United Nations, said today at a meeting at the
UN in New York. He didn’t name Uzbekistan, a downstream cotton
and melon producer that’s Tajikistan’s sole supplier of natural
gas, a heating and power plant fuel.
Winter blackouts affect 70 percent of Tajikistan, where
electricity accounts for most heating and make completion of the
Rogun dam essential, Aslov said through an interpreter during
the water cooperation conference. Uzbekistan has been worried by
a shortage of irrigation water, particularly over the estimated
two years needed to fill the dam’s reservoir, according to the
Central Asia-Caucasus Institute of Johns Hopkins University.
“We will not leave our neighbors without water,” Aslov
said. “We would be unable to do it.”
The tributary spanned by the dam accounts for 30 percent of
the Amu Darya’s flow, he said.
Tajikistan will present an analysis of Central Asian water
supply and use at the August UN conference in its capital
Dushanbe, Rahmat Bobokalonov, Tajikistan’s minister of land
reclamation and water resources, said at the meeting.
The UN General Assembly declared 2013 the International
Year of Water Cooperation three years ago after estimating 1
billion of the 7 billion people on Earth live where water is
scarce and another 500 million where scarcity is increasing.
Energy production accounts for 15 percent of global
freshwater use, second to agriculture, according to the
International Energy Agency. While most of that water is
returned after cooling power plants, water consumption by energy
is expected to rise 85 percent by 2035, mostly through increased
production of biofuels, according to the agency.
To contact the reporter on this story:
Jim Polson in New York at
jpolson@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Susan Warren at
susanwarren@bloomberg.net
