８２３：世銀進捗レポート（中央アジア）

少し前にご紹介した世銀進捗報告書の第２段である。

中央アジア。

いつまでたっても解決されない地域連携だが、世銀も「あっさり、さりげなく」進捗と今後の方針を纏めている。まあ、しょうがないですね。

IWRMも使われていない。integratedは２か所のみ。もうそういう時代ですね。本編でも略語を入れて１２か所のみ。IWRMの流行は終わったようである。本編は１２０ページほどなので興味のある方は見てください。中央アジアの実情を知っていると記述内容との差異が分かると思う。

コピーアンドペーストもワードをかえすとうまく行った。

Issues

The Central Asia sub-region comprises five countries with a total population of 59 million over an area of 4 million square kilometers. There are large differences in available water resources, from Tajikistan with an average of 4,900 m3 per person annually, to Turkmenistan with only 274 m3 available per person annually.

Tajikistan and the Kyrgyz Republic include the major glaciated mountains of the regions and their upstream position is advantageous for water availability and hydropower. In contrast, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan are in a downstream position and are largely dependent on inflow from the other Central Asian republics. Agriculture is a key component of the region’s economy and accounts for 90 percent of its water use. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, most of the region’s water infrastructure continues to decay as the result of unsustainable development and the lack of financing for maintenance and rehabilitation. The national budgets remain inadequate to cover the costs for maintenance, and investments for rehabilitation from IFIs have not been sufficient to reverse the deterioration. Soviet-era legacy institutions for funding infrastructure operation and maintenance have not been sustainable.

While each state still has operational irrigation or water resources departments, further reforms and sustainable financing has proven to be a continuing challenge. The Soviet Union’s mismanagement of the Aral Sea basin resulted in an ecological, economic, and social disaster. While there has been significant progress in repairing the Northern Aral Sea, significant water resources management challenges remain.

Proposed Directions for World Bank
Engagement in 2003

The Strategy stressed the importance of both management and infrastructure instruments, with a focus on rehabilitation and maintenance of an appropriate stock of infrastructure. Major aspects of the 2003 Strategy included (i) the development of a regional water strategy, (ii) continued analytic and advisory work to better understand the economic, social, and environmental impact of rehabilitation, energy use, water and salt strategies, and water and waste water strategies, (iii) a focus on infrastructure rehabilitation, (iv) restoration of negatively impacted ecosystems (wetlands, grasslands, fisheries, etc) and especially the Aral Sea, and (v) continued restructuring of water utilities and support for water user associations.


World Bank Group Achievements
over FY03–09

For the period 2003–2013 the World Bank will have provided investments in the sector for nearly US$1.5 billion. Other multilateral donors, including the Islamic Development
Bank (IsDB), Asia Development Bank (ADB), and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), along with many bilateral donors also continue to be active.

International assistance has helped rehabilitate and maintain some of the infrastructure in key cities and productive centers, but the region-wide situation remains serious. The restoration of the Northern Aral Sea is a major success story for multilateral donors - both for the ecosystem and the communities that now can enjoy fishing and a cleaner environment. Nevertheless, the problems
of inadequate institutional capacity and governance have been further weakened by the emigration of qualified professionals.

Governance arrangements and incentive policies still lag behind and pose a serious impediment to the development of modern and efficient water management systems. Climate change is expected to have a significant impact in the region—with the Climate Vulnerability Index (CVI) ranging from medium to high for all countries; the only positive exception being Kyrgyz Republic with a low CVI.

The Strategy defined the challenges of water resources management and development in Central Asia as daunting; solutions would require concerted actions across sectors. The World Bank work in Central Asia has focused on a number of elements discussed in the Strategy that still remain relevant. While an overarching regional water strategy and action plan is still not in place, national water strategies have been prepared addressing subsector issues such as water supply and sanitation.

The development of a regional strategy is difficult due to the underlying political differences among countries where an agreement on upstream downstream water use is still not in place. The Bank has generally supported this effort with investment support that is complementary and consistent with regional sharing. The Bank also works with United Nations and bilateral organizations whose goals are more directly related to an enhanced political environment for shared water management.

Since the WRS was issued in 2003, a WSS dialogue was held in Kazakhstan between 2004 and 2005 followed by a TA on tariff settings completed in early 2009. Two water supply and sanitation sector notes were prepared in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. The latter was launched with a workshop attended by national authorities and donors in April 2009, while the note for Uzbekistan will be publicly launched in mid-2010. In Tajikistan, the strategy note has galvanized government and donor attention, providing a platform to continue the dialogue and promote necessary reforms. For the critical irrigation sector in Uzbekistan, the Bank completed a report in late 2009 to help rank and prioritize investment funds for rehabilitation and modernization of systems. In cooperation with the Uzbek Technical Working Group, 26 critical investment projects have been assessed.

Restoration of the North Aral Sea has been a major success in the region; as water levels increased by about 3 meters, adding about 50 percent to the surface area of the North Aral Sea, the once vibrant fishing industry was resurrected. Work has continued with the first phase of the financial assistance that will be completed at the end of 2010, and a new project is in the pipeline for 2011. Other rehabilitation projects have been financed in many Central Asian republics, although IDA allocations have limited the size of projects in Tajikistan and Kyrgyz Republic. Financing dedicated to address water pollution from mining and industrial water has been ongoing, especially in Kazakhstan.

Within the framework of the irrigation projects in Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, water users associations have been supported and their capacity enhanced to operate and maintain the systems and collect fees. However, the centralized management system inherited from the Soviet era has slowed institutional reforms. The management contracts tested in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan have not been successful and a new paradigm needs to be explored to enhance the performance of the water utilities.

In the Kyrgyz Republic, about 570 WUAs were legally established for the management of over 750,000 hectares under the first On-farm Irrigation Project. WUAs were trained and supported for several years by dedicated WUA support units that were set up in the Department of Water Resources in order to develop the WUAs into technically and financially sustainable organizations.
Realizing that WUA development is a long-term activity, this support continues under the second On-farm Irrigation Project. In addition to WUA development, the two projects support the rehabilitation and modernization of WUA-managed irrigation systems commanding about 160,000 hectares. IDA also supports the rehabilitation and modernization of higher-order irrigation systems commanding over 400,000 hectares managed by the Department of Water Resources.

The Irrigation Rehabilitation Project (closed) and Water Management Improvement Project (ongoing) also support efforts to transform the Department of Water Resources into an agency that is technically capable of managing complicated irrigation systems in a financially sound manner, with full transparency and accountability to water users.

The Tajikistan Ferghana Valley Water Resources Management Project (FVWRMP) has been under implementation since 2006. The project addresses the water resources management issues in Ferghana Valley in Tajikistan which is a part of the Syr Darya River catchment area. FVWRMP includes several elements of INTEGRATED WATER RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT including the rehabilitation of irrigation and drainage systems for about 30,000 hectares in the valley, as well as the establishment of a number of WUAs, reducing flood risk and improving the operation and safety of the Kayrakkum Dam on the Syr Darya River.

Although the funds allocated to this project are modest (total project cost is only US$14.0 million), the project has already had positive impacts on the lives of the people living in the project areas through increasing agriculture production and reducing the risk of flooding and waterlogging of agriculture land. In addition, under the project, a number of studies and steps have been taken to improve the safety of the dam, including geo-technical investigations, surveys, and a study to improve dam safety, as well as the preparation of the dam safety monitoring and emergency action plan.

Lessons Learnt

The Strategy presents a clear picture of the sector and socio-political context of Central Asia and is still valid today. Experience from ongoing project implementation in Central Asia suggests that rigorous economic and environmental criteria should always be applied in project planning and design, and that the involvement of local institutions and affected populations in project preparation is critical to enhance ownership. Coordination among government agencies is difficult, and this has to be taken into account for crosssector activities that involve an INTEGRATED APPROACH to water management.

Dialogue among countries on equitable use of water resources and international water ways remains challenging. Growing demand for power supply and construction of large impoundments from countries upstream creates tensions with their downstream neighbors. The practicality of bringing about institutional strengthening of water supply and sewerage utilities through a performance based management contract (as had been the intent under the Bukhara and Samarkand Water Supply Project and the Dushanbe Water Supply Project) needs to be re-examined. In the future, a more flexible approach should be adopted balancing weaknesses in local capacity with external, preferably domestic, partnerships to strengthen operational performance.
Given the importance of irrigated agriculture in Central Asia, infrastructure rehabilitation, capacity building, and improved water management technologies have brought great benefits to the people of Uzbekistan, especially in the poorest areas. Continued infrastructure rehabilitation and modernization is crucial for the development and livelihood of rural areas. The benefits of system rehabilitation would be even greater if it was accompanied by sustainable agricultural reforms; water management should not be seen in isolation from the rest of the agricultural production process.
The capacity of water user associations should be strengthened to support improved water distribution in Uzbekistan, especially given the lack of reforms in the state-run agricultural sector in which the government is responsible for O&M.

Directions for Future World Bank
Group Engagement

Through its investment lending and analytic work, the Bank has engaged the principal aspects of water management defined in the Strategy with a focus largely on rehabilitation and national sub-sector reform. In order to move the water agenda forward, more substantive reforms and updated management instruments—on the national level but reflecting regional concerns— will require even greater effort from all stakeholders. Several projects have been proposed to address the restoration of ecosystems and improved use of water supply for sustainable irrigation. A major project will continue the revitalization of the Northern Aral Sea and promote the sustainable use of water from the Syr Darya River. A second project seeks to improve agricultural production in areas of Uzbekistan affected by waterlogging, and to reduce damage to housing and infrastructure from rising groundwater levels and salinity in the project areas. Another major irrigation and drainage project is planned for irrigated agriculture in Kazakhstan that will expand service delivery and land and water management in order to increase sustainable productivity. This will be achieved through rehabilitation and modernization of irrigation and drainage systems, better management, operation, and maintenance of these systems, and more efficient use of associated irrigated lands, all with broad participation of users. Rehabilitation, especially in the areas of water supply and sanitation, is also a priority. The Bukhara and Samarkand Sewerage Project will seek to improve Uzbekistan’s municipal services, which have severely deteriorated and are often energy inefficient.

Maintenance is necessary to improve service reliability, thus improving the public’s quality of life and supporting economic growth. The proposed Syr Darya Water Supply Project will improve the coverage, quality, efficiency, and sustainability of public water supply services through rehabilitation and/or replacement of the existing water supply infrastructure that has now reached the end of its useful life.
In terms of analytical and advisory work, the Bank’s advice is increasingly sought on the sustainable development of hydropower resources in the Region; issues include domestic energy needs, the potential for energy trade/exports for poverty alleviation, and broader transboundary water management considerations. Apart from sustainable development considerations, Bank engagement will support a broader goal of building cooperation at the political level. Technical assistance support is being augmented by pilot projects on adaptation to climate change in vulnerable sub-sectors and regions.