Although the construction of a channel to divert part of the flow of Siberian rivers to Central Asia was canceled by a decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU more than 35 years ago, discussions about the channel continue today. This grandiose project still concerns irrigators, scientists, and politicians, so I decided to share the (often conflicting) opinions expressed to me over time by the most authoritative specialists in this field.
Some of the experts who gave me interviews are no longer alive. However, we are publishing the material due to the current relevance of the topic.
The approximately 2,550 km long channel was planned to be dug from the Russian city of Khanty-Mansiysk, where the Irtysh flows into the Ob, through Kazakhstan to the Amu Darya in northwestern Uzbekistan. Its width was to be 200 meters and depth 16 meters.
The first stage of the project, conceived back in the 1970s, involved diverting 27 billion cubic meters of water annually, and the second stage was intended to increase the annual volume to 60 billion cubic meters, former geography professor at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Philip Micklin, told me.
For comparison, the Ob carries 394 billion cubic meters of water annually into the Kara Sea.
“The first stage was the one that was planned in detail and on which construction was about to begin in 1986 when the project was indefinitely postponed,” Micklin said.
According to Kadyrbek Bozov, former director of a water management project for the Global Ecological Fund in Tashkent, the goal of the channel’s construction was to ensure significant growth in cotton production in Uzbekistan.
The water diverted through the channel would not have substantially helped the dying Aral Sea, as it was intended for irrigation, not for replenishing the Aral, Micklin said.
At the same time, according to Micklin, “environmental effects along the Lower Ob River in Siberia from the diversions would have been significant but, although claimed by some opponents, perceptible effects on the Kara Sea or Arctic were unlikely.”
In the early 2000s, former Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov sent a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin proposing to revive the project and build a channel that would provide water to some regions of Russia, as well as to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
Vadim Antonov, former technical director of the “Vodproekt” association at the Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources of Uzbekistan, told me that Central Asia could not manage without water from the Siberian rivers.
According to him, in the 20th century, the pace of land reclamation and development of new irrigated lands in Central Asia lagged three and a half times behind the global average. No new irrigated lands had appeared in the region since 1986. At the same time, population growth in Central Asia exceeded the global average.
American scientist Micklin was confident that Central Asia should survive without Siberian rivers.
“Central Asia can (and, probably, must) get along without Siberian water,” Micklin told me, adding that the region has enough freshwater, mainly in the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers.
A program to rebuild old and dilapidated irrigation systems could save a huge amount of water that could be used for other purposes, including expanding irrigation, Micklin explained. “Such a program would be very expensive, but cheaper than diversions from Siberia.”
He also believed that agricultural and irrigation reform through institutional changes, land privatization, setting water fees, etc., would encourage farmers to conserve water.
“These would be difficult programs to implement, but in my view, easier and less complicated than delivering water from Siberia with all its costs and environmental and political problems,” Micklin added.
In the longer term, Micklin suggested, Central Asian states could shift their economies so that irrigation itself would become less relevant.
Micklin noted that constructing the channel would take 10 to 20 years and the cost of the first stage would amount to $40 billion.
“The World Bank already has indicated it will not fund such a project. I doubt Russia would come up with the money,” he said.
Micklin also doubted that the Central Asian states themselves, given the state of their economies, could finance the project.
“The main reason for placing the project in limbo was lack of economic justification. It was considered simply too costly for the benefits that might be gained,” Micklin said.
“At present, the region (the Aral Sea basin) does not need additional water,” Viktor Dukhovny, then director of the Scientific and Information Center on Water Management Issues at the Interstate Coordination Water Management Commission of Central Asia, told me about 15 years ago.
According to Dukhovny, the Central Asian basin could manage without extra water until 2025.
“However, after 2025,” he added, “population growth will continue, reaching 100 million by 2050 (according to new data – 120-150 million – Yep.uz), and the impact of global warming on water resources will reach its maximum… Therefore, the need for additional water resources will become evident.”
In the Central Asian region, comprising five former Soviet republics – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan – over 80 million people live. The growing shortage of freshwater remains one of the main challenges for these five states.
Another potential obstacle to implementing the diversion of part of the Siberian rivers’ flow to Central Asia is the cost of water for consumers.
When the project was postponed in 1986, the estimated cost of one cubic meter of water was 5–8 US cents. In a 2002 letter, Luzhkov acknowledged that the cost of water had risen to 20–30 cents per cubic meter, likely beyond the means of most farmers.
At the same time, over recent decades, world prices for irrigated crops – cotton, rice, and wheat – often fell.
In an interview with the newspaper Narodnoe Slovo in February 2019, Honored Irrigator of Uzbekistan and former Minister of Agriculture and Water Resources of Uzbekistan Ismail Jurabekov stated that “such a project (diversion of part of the flow of Siberian rivers to Central Asia – Yep.uz) is necessary in one form or another, particularly for Uzbekistan.”
How do you feel about the idea of diverting part of the Siberian rivers’ flow to Central Asia and the possibility of building a channel for this diversion?