China has forty major transboundary watercourses with neighbouring countries, and has frequently been accused of harming its downstream neighbours through its domestic water management policies, such as the construction of dams for hydropower. This book provides an understanding of water security in Asia by investigating how shared water resources affect China's relationships with neighbouring countries in South, East, Southeast and Central Asia. Since China is an upstream state on most of its shared transboundary rivers, the country's international water policy is at the core of Asia's water security. These water disputes have had strong implications for China's interstate relations, and also influenced its international water policy alongside domestic concerns over water resource management. This book investigates China's policy responses to domestic water crises and examines China's international water policy as well as its strategy in dealing with international cooperation. The authors describe the key elements of water diplomacy in Asia which demonstrate varying degrees of effectiveness of environmental agreements. It shows how China has established various institutional arrangements with neighbouring countries, primarily in the form of bilateral agreements over hydrological data exchange. Detailed case studies are included of the Mekong, Brahmaputra, Ili and Amur rivers.

Environmental degradation in the Aral Sea basin in Central Asia has been a touchstone for increasing public awareness of environmental issues. The Aral crisis has been touted as a "quiet Chernobyl" and as one of the worst human-made environmental catastrophes of the twentieth century. This multidisciplinary book is the first to comprehensively describe the slow onset of low grade but incremental changes (i.e., creeping environmental change) that affected the region and its peoples. Through a set of case studies, it describes how the region's decision-makers allowed these changes to grow into an environmental and societal nightmare. It outlines many lessons to be learned for other areas undergoing detrimental creeping environmental change, and provides an important example of how to approach such disasters for students and researchers of environmental studies, global change, political science and history.

In this global era, Central Asia must be understood in both geo-economic and geopolitical terms. The region's natural resources compel the attention of rivalrous great powers and ambitious internal factions. The local regimes are caught between the need for international collaborations to valorize these riches and the need to maintain control over them in the interest of state sovereignty. Russia and China dominate the horizon, with other global players close behind; meanwhile, neighboring countries are fractious and unstable with real potential for contagion. This pathbreaking introduction to Central Asia in contemporary international economic and political context answers the needs of both academic and professional audiences and is suitable for course adoption.

This volume reproduces the proceedings of an Advanced Research Workshop held in Bishkek, which brought together all the most senior water resource managers in Central Asia, from Ministers to local experts and eminent academics. It describes, from the practitioner's perspective, the problems encountered in the region's efforts to implement integrated water resources management and solutions that have been put in place in order to address these.

This book reviews the concept, contemporary research efforts and the implementation of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM). The IWRM concept was established as an international guiding water management paradigm in the early 1990ies and has become a vital approach to solving the problems associated with the topic of water. The book summarizes fourteen comprehensive IWRM research projects with worldwide coverage and analyses their motivations, settings, approaches and implementation of results. Aiming to be an up-to-date interdisciplinary scientific reference, this book provides a comprehensive theoretical and empirical analysis of contemporary IWRM research, examples of science based implementations and a synthesis of the lessons learnt. It concludes with some major future challenges, the solving of which will further strengthen the IWRM concept.

Since the tragic events of September 11, Central Asia has been drawn into the intense struggle of the international community against the forces of religious extremism and transnational crime. The great powers were able to put aside their geopolitical differences in order to crush al-Qaeda and the Taliban. With the marginalization of the Taliban and the eviction of al-Qaeda from Afghanistan, however, the tension between the great powers is notably increasing, as is the discomfort of Central Asian states who find themselves, their political development, and their oil reserves in the middle of a renewed Great Game. Islam, Oil, and Geopolitics is a truly international volume, including chapters written by senior scholars, upcoming students in the field, prominent diplomats, and renowned academics from Russia, China, the United States, and the Central Asian republics. They collaborate to focus on three important issues that are usually--and unfortunately--analyzed separately: Islamic political issues, energy security, and geopolitical maneuvering. Once an obscure and little-known region, Central Asia has become an important test of America's ability to consistently promote global liberal change, of Russia's true foreign policy agenda, and of China's readiness to translate economic power into political influence. Terrorism, economics, and politics all converge in this strategic region, with important implications for Asia and the world. This significant and timely volume helps readers understand current events in Central Asia and how those events affect the rest of the world. Contributions by: Kamoludin Abdullaev, Rouben Azizian, Gaye Christoffersen, Elizabeth Van Wie Davis, Feng Shaolei, Pan Guang, Shireen Hunter, Alisher Khamidov, Mikhail A. Konarovsky, Najibullah Lafraie, Murat Laumulin, Sergey I. Lounev, Aleksei V. Malashenko, Orhon Myadar, Manabu Shimizu, Thomas W. Simons Jr., Robert Smith, Sergei Troush, Kang Wu, and Shi Yinhong.

The book aims to initiate a sustainable use of land and water resources in Central Asia by the transfer of scientific methods. It deals with the most advanced methods worldwide for  better monitoring and management of water and land resources. We offer an array of methods of measuring, assessing, forecasting, utilizing and controling processes in agricultural landscapes. These are laboratory and field measurement methods, methods of resource evaluation, functional mapping and risk assessment, and remote sensing methods for monitoring and modeling large areas. The book contains methods and results of data analysis and ecosystem modeling, of bioremediation of soil and water, field monitoring of soils, and methods and technologies for optimizing land use systems as well. The chapter authors are inventors and advocators of novel transferrable methods. The book starts with an analysis of the current state of water and land resources. Finally concrete proposals for the applicability of novel methods are given.

Water is an irreplaceable and transient resource, which crosses political boundaries in the form of rivers, lakes, and groundwater aquifers. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, led to the birth of fifteen countries including the five Central Asian republics, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. When the USSR ceased to exist, so did the centralised Soviet resource distribution system that managed the exchange and allocation of water, energy, and food supplies. A whole new set of international relations emerged, and the newly formed Central Asian governments had to redefine the policies related to the exchange and sharing of their natural resources. This book analyses the role of state power in transboundary water relations. It provides an in-depth study of the evolution of interstate relations in Central Asia in the field of water from 1991-2015. Taking as a case study the planned construction of the Rogun and Kambarata dams in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, the author examines various forms of overt and covert power shaping interstate relations and the way hegemonic and counter-hegemonic measures are put in place in an international river basin. He argues that the intimate correlation between the concepts of power and hegemony can offer key insights to the analysis and understanding of transboundary water relations. While the analytical focus is placed on state power, the book demonstrates that hegemonic and counter-hegemonic tactics represent the ways in which power is wielded and observed. Offering fresh theoretical interpretations to the subjects of power and counter-hegemony in the Aral Sea basin, this book puts forward the original circle of hydro-hegemony, an analytical framework in which the various forms of power are connective in the function of hegemony. It will be of interest to scholars in the field of water and environmental politics and Central Asian Studies.

This book examines the impact and implications of the declaration of human right to water and sanitation access for human security in Central Asia. It analyzes the current risks and threats arising from mismanagement of water resources in Central Asia through the different dimensions of human security: environmental, economic, social, and political. Identifying the main actors involved in water conflict in the region, the author pays particular attention to the multilateral security organizations operating in the region, OSCE, NATO, SCO, and CSTO, and discusses whether their security policies have been effective in addressing these conflicts.

This report evaluates how well EECCA countries have done in ensuring people's access to adequate water supply and sanitation services since their Economic, Finance, and Environment Ministers adopted the Almaty Guiding Principles to support such efforts in 2000. Besides looking at trends in the technical and financial performance of the water sector, the report analyses the results of institutional reforms at different levels of governance, as well as financing arrangements. Analysis focuses mainly on urban areas, but some of the challenges in rural areas are also examined. The report draws policy recommendations to help countries stem the decline in the sector's performance that has occurred over the last decade, despite opportunities provided by rapid economic growth in many EECCA countries in this period.

After the sovjet era and since their independence the new Central Asian countries are rebuilding a system of water resources management: an important challenge for the development of the whole region. The NATO workshop held on 25-27 August 2003 by the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation, Germany and the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Science, attended by experts from five Central Asian countries, Russia, six Western European countries, the US and the UNEP offered water engineers and nature scientists as well as economic and political scientists and practitioners from water administrations and international river commissions to meet in Novosibirsk and develop sustainable approaches in the management of Central Asian water resources. This book presents important aspects of transboundary water resources, i.e. the global water crisis: problems and perspectives; regional experiences in solving water problems in Central Asia; problems and management of transboundary water resources; ecological and economic aspects of water management; scientific analysis and tools of water changes; strategic implications of water access arisen during the workshop. A final recommendation in the area of equitable sharing of benefits, monitoring and data collection as well as proposals for Central Asia transboundary waters programme were set in the book as the main result of the meeting.

The Central Asian republics and neighboring countries are currently experiencing problems related to the availability and efficient/equitable distribution of freshwater. This book contains papers from a NATO-sponsored Advanced Research Workshop that was organized to address these concerns. It addresses the myriad of issues involving shared freshwater among the countries in this region, discussing ecology, law, economics, politics, water policy and integrated water management.

Central Asia is vulnerable to water scarcity because it is located in semiarid and arid vegetation zones and large parts of its economy depend on water for irrigation and energy. Climate-change scenarios predict temperature increases and a rising number of extreme weather events, which will exacerbate water shortages in the future. In addition, the population of Central Asia is growing more rapidly than the rate of food production which is resulting in food insecurity in many parts of the region too.This volume reports the deliberations of politicians, scientists and representatives of water management organizations from throughout Central Asia. Their contributions not only highlight areas of concern, but also propose numerous ideas for improving the long-term water- and food security in the region.

Central Asia is the cluster of countries located in the basin of the "Great Aral Sea". It originates from the ancient civilizations of the IV-III millennium B.C. known as "Ariana" and is an important geopolitical centre today, where the USA, Russia, China, EU, Iran and India participate in the regional water game. The Aral Sea Basin has always been a subject of interest to outside powers as a target of travel or political blame. At the same time it was a source of prosperity and a place of work, love, history and strong cultural traditions for almost 100 million people.nbsp; At present the Aral Sea Basin is shared by independent states with different interests but at the same time in need of close collaboration for their survival. Much has been written about this region but few writers have discovered the deeper roots of the historical transformations that have caused the present situation of environmental degradation. The extremely arid character of the region is a cause of very sensitive natural and social conditions; a very fragile balance that is easily disturbed by any important impact from the outside or innovations from the inside. Only a thorough analysis of both the positive ambitions of the region and their possible negative consequences can provide the necessary understanding of why important development initiatives of the recent past have always produced the negative consequences as they did.