Rethinking Water Scarcity in the Fergana Valley

This research project focuses on water scarcity in the Fergana Valley of Central Asia. Environmental change is often understood as a result of natural forces, and prevailing narratives about water scarcity tend to frame fluctuations in water availability as purely environmental. As a result, the sociopolitical and institutional dimensions of water distribution and management are frequently overlooked, treating scarcity as something separate from human influence.

This visual project invites you to explore the conceptual model of water scarcity in hydrosocial systems. Based on the hydrosocial cycle initially introduced by Linton & Budds (2014) and the ideas of political ecology of water, this study applies a systemic understanding of scarcity in the regional context of Central Asia. Explore the model by navigating through the various concepts. 

Water is never simply H₂O. It is a technical input for agricultural production, a cultural symbol tied to fertility and life, and a political object through which states articulate sovereignty and control. Scarcity can be seen as a phenomenon that emerges at the intersection of environmental conditions and societal organisation, similar to how the hydrosocial cycle understands water as the outcome of social relations and material flows (Linton & Budds, 2014).

In this scheme, the hydrosocial cycle incorporates the hydrologic cycle as an integral component, reframing water (H₂O) not as a passive physical substance but as an active participant in social relations. For instance, in water governance, technology and power structures shape hydrologic processes such as river flows or dam storage. Thus, the material behaviour of water both stabilises and disrupts social orders, revealing how the movement of H₂O connects the rhythms, livelihoods, and transformations of the environment within the hydrosocial system.

The Fergana Valley is enclosed by the Tien Shan ranges to the north and east and the Alay–Turkestan ranges to the south. The valley is characterised by a dry continental environment with hot summers and little precipitation, and it relies on storage reservoirs and canal networks. As a fertile basin in Central Asia, the Fergana Valley covers parts of eastern Uzbekistan, northern Tajikistan and southern Kyrgyzstan.

At the eastern end of the valley, the glacier- and snow-fed Naryn and Kara Darya rivers join to form the Syr Darya, one of Central Asia’s longest rivers. As it flows westward, it supports the region’s dense irrigated agriculture. In Tajikistan’s northern districts, which rely primarily on transboundary inflows, the Syr Darya runs for about 195 km; its main tributaries, Isfara, Khodja Bakirgan, Isfana, and Aksu, originate in the Turkestan Range. The primary system of water delivery includes major canals diverted from the Syr Darya river through the Big (Great) Fergana Canal (also the North and South Fergana canals) into a dense grid of main, inter-farm and on-farm canals and collector-drainage networks. This system determines the timing and reliability of water allocation and has allowed for the production of water-intensive "signature crops", such as cotton, as well as locally prevalent rice, vegetables, and apricot orchards.

Water in the Fergana Valley is managed through a complex regional system that reflects both Soviet legacies and post-independence cooperation. Since 1992, the Interstate Commission for Water Coordination (ICWC), together with the Basin Water Organisations (BWO) of Syr Darya and Amu Darya, has coordinated the distribution of water among the Central Asian republics. These institutions set seasonal quotas and regulate reservoir releases from Toktogul in Kyrgyzstan, Kayrakkum (Bakhri Tojik) in Tajikistan, and Kempirabad in Uzbekistan, which determine the water available for irrigation in the Fergana Valley. Negotiations between energy-producing upstream states and downstream farming regions influence when and how much water flows through the canal systems each year.

The valley’s agriculture still bears the imprint of Soviet planning, dominated by rotations of cotton and wheat, now complemented by vegetables, orchards, and small rice fields. Local soil quality, access to markets, and district policies create a patchwork of cropping patterns along the canals.

Our case studies focus on Jabbor Rasulov and Konibodom, two districts in northern Tajikistan located at the downstream ends of major transboundary canals along the borders with Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. In Jabbor Rasulov, farms depend on pumping stations along the Syr Darya River and on the Khoja-Bakirgan Canal, which carries water from the Kyrgyz Republic. During March–April and Chilla, the peak summer months, water often arrives late or in smaller amounts to these fields. This makes farmers especially vulnerable to shortages.

In Konibodom, irrigation relies on the Big Fergana Canal (BFC), a 270-kilometre waterway built in 1939 that crosses Kyrgyz, Uzbek, and Tajik territories, as well as diversions from the Syr Darya and Isfara rivers. Around 13,000 farms draw on this more diverse mix of sources, but early-season shortages regularly reduce water deliveries to roughly one-third of the actual demand.

Water scarcity is understood differently across these sites: for engineers, it reflects hydraulic constraints; for farmers, it raises questions of fairness and timing; and for water managers, it becomes a daily negotiation between technical demands, social expectations, and political realities. Together, these perspectives reveal that scarcity in the Fergana Valley is not only a matter of water flow but also of governance, coordination, and trust.

Throughout the centuries in human history, irrigation has allowed expansive crop production, enabling the establishment of water supplies to communities living far from natural river flows. The Soviet quest to master water transformed drylands into fields and canals as the instruments of progress. Cotton production was expanded in the Soviet Union's southern republics, particularly Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan. In pursuit of these targets, Moscow funded major irrigation projects that redirected the Amu and Syr Darya rivers through canals, reservoirs, and pumping stations, significantly increasing cultivated land. This hydraulic expansion increased cotton production while also setting the ground for significant ecological degradation, the most notable of which was the sinking of the Aral Sea.

These environmental transformations aligned with broader processes of modernisation and industrialisation in the 20th century, whereby large irrigation canals and reservoirs built in the Fergana Valley were designed to integrate agricultural production and move water seamlessly across the internal republican boundaries of the Soviet Union.

By applying the hydrosocial systems framework to irrigation modernisation in Central Asia's Fergana Valley, we can better understand Soviet-era irrigation as a profound reconfiguration of human-water relations. The construction and expansion of large canals, distribution networks, and high-elevation irrigation routes was driven by a modernist logic of control, efficiency, and standardisation, aiming to maximise water extraction. The technocratic rescaling of water systems has transformed not only the physical landscape but also the institutional and cultural relations, such as everyday practices of allocation and negotiation, through which water is governed. After 1991, these legacies persisted in reshaped bureaucracies and basin authorities, leaving a path-dependent governance landscape in which formal institutions often struggled to incorporate local expertise and everyday management practices.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, water user associations (WUAs) in Central Asia emerged largely through internationally promoted integrated water resource management (IWRM) reforms that aimed to decentralise control and involve farmers directly in irrigation governance. While intended to enhance participation and efficiency, these reforms have not often been aligned with on-the-ground realities (for instance, administrative hierarchies and weak coordination and lack of technical and operational capacity).

The shrinkage of the Aral Sea, widely associated with Soviet-era river diversions to expand cotton production, continues to shape contemporary water politics in Central Asia. It evokes narratives of over-extraction and environmental injustice between upstream and downstream actors. This legacy reinforces path dependencies in seasonal tensions between agriculture and hydropower that remain deeply embedded in this region. However, the shared recognition of this common past has also given rise to new initiatives for dialogue and basin-wide cooperation. Since 2022, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan have renewed their diplomatic efforts aimed at stabilising cross-border water relations. It opened new prospects for negotiations on projects such as the Rogun Dam in Tajikistan and the operation of the Toktogul reservoir in Kyrgyzstan. In addition, regional initiatives have begun to address the long-standing transparency of cross-border water flows. Notably, in 2024, the Blue Peace Central Asia initiative implemented cooperative monitoring systems on numerous key transboundary canals, including parts of the Big Fergana Canal.

The Fergana Valley's extensive network of canals, reservoirs, and pumping stations, initially engineered for tightly centralised management, now spans multiple national borders and is increasingly fragmented. This network is not only responsible for irrigation but is also closely tied to hydropower generation, which requires coordinated control of seasonal water releases. As a result, water allocation is entangled with energy needs, reinforcing competing claims and intensifying the flow regulation. In addition, environmental degradation and high evaporation increase water scarcity by reducing the overall efficiency of the system.
Over the past three decades, demands on the valley’s irrigation networks have steadily intensified. Population growth has increased domestic and household water needs, competing directly with agricultural use during summer peaks. Agricultural diversification and economic shifts have intensified cropping cycles (for instance, through double harvesting, greenhouse production, and water-sensitive orchards), which require more precise and frequent irrigation rather than seasonal delivery. These are compressing irrigation windows and making farmers highly vulnerable to water shortages.

Socio-politics of water scarcity
Since the independence of Central Asian countries in 1991, the disputes over water allocation between Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan have often carried meanings that extend far beyond water volumes and flow rates. At the transboundary level, asymmetries among states are equally evident: Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan’s upstream control of reservoirs contrasts with Uzbekistan’s downstream demand for irrigation water, creating conditions in which scarcity becomes entangled with hydro-hegemony. In this sense, scarcity is less about absolute shortages and more about how power and negotiation determine whose needs are prioritised.
 

Power of spatial configurations
The configuration of irrigation networks in the Fergana Valley places certain communities in downstream positions, shaping both their access to water and their exposure to scarcity. Being downstream is thus not merely a hydrological condition but also a socio-political one, as it reinforces hierarchical relations within irrigation governance and results in an uneven distribution of scarcity along the canal system.

The epistemology of water asks how we know water, and these ways of knowing also shape the understandings of “scarcity”. When scarcity is defined primarily by volumetric measures (e.g., cubic meters per capita), it privileges technocratic logics and can obscure questions of access, power, and distribution. The ontology of water asks what water is: merely H₂O moving through a hydrologic cycle, or a relational entity embedded in infrastructures, water governance, livelihoods, and meanings it produces. Understanding water as a standardised mobile resource presents scarcity as a natural shortfall that new storage, transfers, or efficiency technologies can address.

This is the core of resourcification: water is transformed into a standardised commodity, measurable, priced, and governed by uniform rules, thus framing scarcity as a technical and economic issue. However, when water is understood as a socio-natural and spatially embedded entity, scarcity takes on political and ethical dimensions – it becomes tied to historical narratives of inclusion and exclusion, shaping water rights, institutional arrangements, and the unequal experiences of its users.

These contrasting epistemologies and ontologies do not merely describe scarcity—they actively produce different understandings, making certain interventions possible while sidelining others.  Acknowledging these epistemic-ontological differences expands the range of responses beyond technocratic fixes in water governance, opening space for justice-oriented, context-specific approaches and the plural knowledges of diverse water users through participatory perspectives.

In the Fergana Valley's downstream systems, groundwater extraction has emerged as a key adaptive approach in response to increasingly unreliable surface irrigation during the vegetative season.  Farmers and households rely on wells to obtain water for crop survival from the early watering periods (typically beginning in late March to mid-April) through the summer months of peak agricultural demand.

Local groundwater techniques are diverse and socially integrated. Some actors invest in deep wells (up to 120 metres) or hire private drilling operators to develop personal or group reserves. Others rely on communal pumps or informal sharing agreements reached at the mahalla (neighbourhood) level between neighbouring farms. These partnerships, which are based on familial relationships, land proximity, or long-standing social ties, may include reciprocal labour, seasonal payments, or in-kind contributions.