Risky riparianism: cooperative water governance in Central Asia

Water governance has emerged as one of the intense and most urgent challenges of the new century, largely due to the threatened nature of water availability and the transboundary character of water challenges. These conditions pose exceptionally high risks for societies that need to address these challenges. Using the concept of risk society as developed by Ulrich Beck, this article illustrates how shared risk among Central Asian countries provides the impetus for developing water governance mechanisms. However, the historical and sociocultural circumstances of these countries pose limits to their ability to craft workable governance arrangements; in particular, the Soviet legacy of centralised command-and-control governance over water and related ethnic tensions among countries. These tensions play out in the demarcation of water boundaries and the subsequent allocation of water resources among the riparian countries. However, these limitations can also be viewed through the lens of ‘reflexive governance’, which allows for flexibility, hybridisation, uncertainty and even ignorance.