The water that serveth all that country is drawn by ditches out of the river Oxus, into the great destruction of the said river, for which cause it falleth not into the Caspian Sea as it hath done in times past, and in short time all that land is like to be destroyed, and to become a wilderness for want of water, when the river of Oxus shall fail. Anthony Jenkinson, 1558 1 C entral Asia 2 is defined by its relationship to a precious natural resource: water. In fact, water is such an essential element of the region's identity that once Central Asia was known in classical Greek texts as Transoxiana, which literally means the land on the other side of the Oxus River (now the Amu Darya). It was water that drew international attention to the region shortly after the independence of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan: specifically, the fate of the Aral Sea. The Aral Sea has been shrinking since the 1960s, when the Soviet Union decided to divert the region's two major rivers, the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya, for irrigation purposes. Central Asia was to become a massive centre for cotton production. Today, irrigated agriculture still drives the economies of most of the downstream states in the region: Turkmenistan, and more especially Uzbekistan, rely heavily on cotton production. And the Aral Sea is a massive ecological disaster. Its volume has decreased by 90% and it has divided into two highly saline lakes. 3 Four-fifths of all fish species have disappeared and the effects on the health and livelihoods of the local population have been catastrophic. But the Central Asian water crisis is not just about the fate of the Aral Sea. It is about the management of the entire basin. Indeed, Central Asian leaders are currently more concerned with the resources of the region's many rivers than with environmental issues. It could be assumed that Central Asia is water scarce, given the status of the Aral Sea. But the water crisis in Central Asia is due to the way water has been allocated and managed; it is not a crisis of quantity but of distribution. The region as a whole has significant water resources: Kazakhstan, for example, claims more than 85,000 rivers and streams, and 56% of its 100km 3 annual river flow is formed on the territory of Kazakhstan itself. 4 The main problem lies in the imbalance in water allocations. At independence, downstream states withdrew 82% of water (Uzbekistan withdrew 52%, Turkmenistan 20% and Kazakhstan 10%). In contrast, the total water withdrawal of the upstream states (Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan) was just 17%. Agreements were signed to maintain these allocations and thus assure cotton production in downstream states, but they pay no heed to the changes that have occurred since the collapse of the The governance of Central Asian waters: national interests versus regional cooperation Jeremy ALLOUCHE Jeremy Allouche is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The author would like to thank Thierry Kellner and Kai Wegerich for their precious comments.