Eurasianet


Aug 21, 2020

Water supply has been a problem for years, but the issue has become so
acute in recent months that has begun to receive high-level attention.

Water shortages in Azerbaijan, which have vexed the country for years,
have recently become exacerbated, forcing the government to promise
action.

For several years “we only have had water for two or three hours a
night,” said one resident of Baku’s Ramana district, speaking to
Eurasianet on condition of anonymity, like all sources in this story.
“We have complained to the relevant agencies several times, sent a
letter to the presidential administration, called the hotline” (of the
state water service company, Azersu).

In the village of Fatmayi in the Absheron region, residents started
experiencing severe water problems about three years ago. “The flow of
water is very slow,” one resident said. “Once or twice a week it stops
altogether, for up to three hours.”

The sources of Azerbaijan’s water problems are manifold.

The country’s main water source, the Kura River, which flows from
Turkey through Georgia and Azerbaijan to the Caspian Sea, has been
shrinking in part due to excessive agriculture and some experts
believe that it may soon peter out before reaching the sea. The
second-largest river, the Araxes, flows along the border with Iran and
its volume has been shrinking as well, exacerbated by a large number
of reservoirs taking out water. Add to that recent droughts, pollution
and chronic mismanagement, and the situation has become so dire that
the government has in recent weeks begun to put it at the top of the
country’s agenda.

Azerbaijan’s state-owned TV channel AZTV carried a segment in June
reporting that the Kura’s level had dropped two-and-a-half meters in
some places in recent months, causing water from the Caspian Sea to
flow back into the river rather than – as usual – the other way
around. The level of the Mingachevir reservoir, which is fed by the
Kura, had dropped by 16 meters during the same period, the piece
reported.

President Ilham Aliyev for the first time acknowledged the crisis in a
July 23 government meeting, saying that drought, wasteful practices in
agriculture, and in some cases the “indifferent attitude of relevant
bodies” had contributed to the country’s water problems. Aliyev also
said that water-intensive cotton farming, which the government has
promoted in recent years, is suffering because of the shortages. He
receives letters from “over 10 districts every day,” mostly from
farmers and business people, about their water problems, he said.

“From now on, drinking water and irrigation projects will be on our
agenda as the most important issues. The main goal of today's meeting
is to eliminate the mistakes and existing shortcomings in this area in
the coming years,” Aliyev said.

In the village of Qaraxanli, near the border with Armenia, the water
channel that was once fed from the Kura has been dry for more than 10
years. The government drilled wells and set up pumps in the village in
2017 and 2018, but water only flows two hours a day, a resident told
Eurasianet. Farmers in the area have to buy water to be shipped in
tanks to irrigate their crops. “Sometimes you need to wait for a long
time for your turn to buy water as there are many people waiting,” one
resident told Eurasianet.

While the president did not touch on the international angle of the
problem, other Azerbaijani officials have blamed several of its
neighbors for the water shortages.

“Pollution of our main water resources – the Araxes and Kura rivers –
by neighboring countries also aggravates the situation,” said Sadiq
Qurbanov, the chair of the Azerbaijani parliament’s Committee for
Natural Resources, Energy and Environment, during a July 3 meeting.
“Azerbaijan has joined 17 conventions on water but unfortunately,
neighboring countries Armenia and Georgia have not joined those
conventions.”

Georgia and Azerbaijan have discussed a bilateral agreement on
management of the Kura, but have yet to sign a deal. With Armenia,
meanwhile, Azerbaijan remains locked in conflict over the territory of
Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan’s 560-million-cubic-meter Sarsang
Reservoir is controlled by Armenian forces following a war in the
1990s. A 2016 report from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of
Europe said that the Armenian authorities were “deliberately
depriving” Azerbaijanis of the water as a “political tool.”

In June, Iran agreed to increase the volume of water in the Araxes
reservoir, which is jointly managed by the two countries, after
Azerbaijan complained that the water level of the Araxes River had
fallen, threatening water supplies to nearby areas.

Baku has recently announced a number of measures aimed at ameliorating
the water shortages, including an "Action Plan for 2020-2022 on
ensuring efficient use of water resources" approved in July.

It has commissioned 10 new reservoirs across the country, as well as
new water pipelines and irrigation canals. In the town of Neftchala,
where water currently has to be trucked in, Azersu will be building a
new water main. And it is drilling wells across the country.

An analysis of the proposed measures by the independent news agency
Turan, however, expressed skepticism that the plan will do much to
solve Azerbaijan’s water problems. “[A]lthough experts have long
warned the government in mass media about the misuse of existing water
resources, the government had to discuss the issue only this year,
when the situation reached a critical point,” it wrote.

It cited government statistics to argue that the measures Aliyev cited
as past successes have made only a small dent in the problem so far.

“If about a tenth of the work to be done has been done in 15 years,
how many 15-year [periods] are needed to eliminate the water shortage
in the country? While hundreds of millions of manats of state funds
have been allocated to this area over the past 15 years, the existing
problems have not yet been resolved.”