Regional Overview of Central Asia

Year: 2013

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General summary

The six countries forming the Central Asia region were determined by the regional distribution given in FAO's Water Report 23 "Review of world water resources by country" (2003). The six countries are Afghanistan and five countries that were part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) before their independence in 1991: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

In the previous survey on Irrigation in the countries of the Former Soviet Union (1997), Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan were grouped into the Central Asia subregion. The present survey includes Afghanistan in the Central Asia region because of the important shared water resources in the Amu Darya and the Tedzhen-Murghab basins. In the previous survey Afghanistan was included in the publication on the Irrigation in the Near East region (1997).

This regional overview presents distinguishing features arising from the new data collected on a national scale for issues addressed in the six country profiles and one transboundary river basin profile, the Aral Sea basin profile. The interest of this new survey lies in the updating of data and in the trends during the last ten years.