Interviews | Environment | Central Asia

Theresa Sabonis-Helf on Central Asia’s Thirsty Future Industries

“I don’t find evidence that [Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan] are yet grappling with the water needs of next-generation industries.”

Central Asia is home to one of the most infamous human-caused ecological catastrophes: the dramatic drying-up of the Aral Sea. That disaster was rooted in systemic mismanagement of the region’s water resources in pursuit of cotton production, primarily during the Soviet period.

Today, the region is in hot pursuit of emerging industries that could prove just as disastrous to the region’s water resources as cotton was: critical minerals and artificial intelligence (AI).

The Diplomat’s Managing Editor Catherine Putz spoke with Dr. Theresa Sabonis-Helf, professor of the practice and concentration chair for science, technology and international affairs at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, about the intersection of several critical issues in Central Asia: water and energy, critical minerals and AI, and how regional governments are (or are not) prepared to balance these competing concerns. 

Central Asia’s water woes are not new. The Aral Sea is one of the most infamous examples in the world of the consequences of water mismanagement. Can you lay out what factors contributed to the shrinking of what was once the world’s fourth-largest lake?

The Aral Sea tragedy was largely a consequence of cotton farming.  From Tsarist times (but escalating dramatically in the Soviet era), the region was prized for farming cotton.  It was the only region of the Tsarist empire warm enough to grow it … but cotton is an infamously thirsty crop, so the continuous expansion of cotton production required more and more water.  In addition, the irrigation systems used to supply the cotton were unlined, and leaked water constantly into the desert.  

By the early 1990s, only a trickle of water from the once-mighty Amu Darya was arriving at the Aral Sea, and as the sea grew more and more shallow, evaporation accelerated. The other tributary to the Aral Sea, the Syr Darya River, was also delivering a declining volume. By the early 1990s, hydrologists calculated that the only way to save the Aral Sea was to take no withdrawals from the two rivers for a decade… which was impossible. Today, Uzbekistan produces less than 50 percent of the cotton it did in the Soviet era, but cotton still accounts for 24 percent of employment and provides 19 percent of its GDP.

What lessons did that experience convey to the Central Asian states?

In the early years of independence, the Central Asian states appealed to the World Bank to help improve irrigation systems, but the Bank was concerned by the unsustainability of cotton in the desert, so it focused instead on damage mitigation.  Kazakhstan was willing (and able) to reduce outtakes from the Syr Darya, so the World Bank helped finance the Kokaral Dam, completed in 2005, which separated and attempted to save a small portion of the sea, now known as the North Aral Sea. 

The North Aral is now a healthy body of water, but it is less than a tenth the size of the former sea… and its construction did hasten the collapse of the rest of the sea, by retaining all the flows of the Syr Darya in a smaller area. 

Kazakhstan learned from this experience to take water resources more seriously – it is now a leader in the region in water efficiency technologies. Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan pursued policies to reduce cotton in favor of wheat, but they discovered that the wheat they can produce is lower-value… it is also too low-gluten to make the preferred regional breads, so the agricultural transition wasn’t what the governments had hoped.  Turkmenistan is now an exporter of fodder wheat to Afghanistan even as it continues to import bakery-quality wheat from Kazakhstan. 

Even with better water management, the viability of agriculture in the region is likely to continue to decline. It isn’t evident that the governments of the region have come to terms with that issue.

The latest economic hot topics – artificial intelligence (AI) and critical minerals – are all the rage in Central Asia. Can you describe how AI and critical minerals relate to water security?  

Both of these put significant pressure on water resources. Central Asia does have 25 of the minerals that the U.S. designates as “critical,” so they are an attractive target for investment. Mining, however, is water-intensive, and refining (which adds value but requires water for separating minerals, cooling mining machinery and controlling dust) is also water-intensive.  

Central Asia is not alone – an estimated 16 percent of critical minerals mines and assets globally are located in water-stressed regions, so best practices are evolving.  Mining companies will focus on water efficiency only if pressed to do so by host countries – that emphasis should be built into any Central Asia contracts.  Without careful attention to water use, critical minerals can both consume a lot of water, and pollute nearby water resources.  

As Central Asian states negotiate with companies interested in their mineral resources, the World Resources Institute’s recommendations for water protection from mining effects should prove useful, including use of efficient/water-saving/ technologies, setting water usage targets for mining companies, improving governance and environmental regulation, and expanding access to data about the impacts of mining.

Artificial intelligence uses a substantial amount of water as well. Although arid climates are favorable for data center equipment (reducing damage from humidity), a large data center can require hundreds of thousands of gallons of water daily to carry away the surplus........

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