Cross-border river sharing challenges and sustainable fisheries: A salute to the impact of William Taylor

I first met Bill Taylor when, as a Department Chair in the College Agriculture and Natural Resources, he collaborated with James Madison College for two joint faculty hires between his Department of Fisheries and Wildlife and our International Relations major at JMC. Bill, Prof. Michael Schechter, Dean Sherman Garnett and I then developed what became a joint undergraduate minor between our two Colleges and Lyman Briggs College of Science and Society with a focus on Science, Technology, the Environment and Public Policy Studies. This minor is still in place with many graduates from the three Colleges learning from one another over the years to help frame and perhaps influence more effective government policy in this crucial area. We believe it fills an important gap in bringing environmental science together with understanding of the public policy process and the dynamics of political economy constraints and drivers to frame effective policy and programs.1Flowing from these initial encounters was a series of collaborations on summer study abroad programs sponsored by the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife and James Madison College with a focus on climate change, water scarcity and sustainable fisheries. Bill and I directed these ventures for several years comparing policies and science in Greece and Turkey and later England and Scotland. This engaged several other faculty and advanced graduate students to participate in the instruction and to develop productive research and teaching partnerships with several prominent European universities and marine research institutes.2Our time together with fishery practitioners, scientists and policy makers in the UK, Greece and Turkey led many of us to begin new research programs that examined national and regional sustainable development projects and policies in a wide range of geographical settings well beyond these countries. Bill worked with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations to plan and lead a Global Conference on Inland Fisheries co-sponsored by Michigan State University and convened in Rome in January 26-30, 2015. As an early scholar of UN global conferences, which I began studying as a UN employee, I would like to stress how noteworthy/unusual was this joint sponsorship between a UN Agency and a University. But the key for me was that I presented his first relevant paper on the apparent collapse of Central Eurasian inland fisheries in the wake of the collapse of the USSR.3 This was followed by a substantial series of interdisciplinary studies and articles with international partners which looked at the prospects for sustainable fisheries and agriculture in the face of policy and program neglect. This neglect was due in part to political regime preoccupation with suddenly lucrative fossil fuel exports by several Central Eurasian states, as well as public and private unwillingness more broadly to respond aggressively and sustainably to the growing impact of climate change on scarce water resources in the region.4One of the Scottish study abroad experiences on sustainable fisheries with Bill led ultimately to the main project we would like to describe as part of his legacy to us and others. Coming toward the end of our time in Scotland in the summer of 2013, we (students and faculty) spent time with the scientists and technicians who operate the Pitlochry dam complex on the River Tummel in Central Scotland. This dam was constructed in 1951-2 as a hydroelectric installation with a viable Salmon ladder system. This “ladder” enabled Salmon to reach their traditional spawning “grounds” through an interconnected series of chambers, while the dam otherwise constricted the river flow for production of renewable energy. It was the first time that many of us had witnessed a working Salmon ladder installed as part of a dam, and it led some to begin looking for them (and the prospect for incorporating them) in other countries and regions. Several of the studies cited above make passing reference to this question in relation to Central Eurasian river systems. The most diabolical negative case of dam construction that clearly reduced fish spawning may have been the Soviet construction of the Volga hydroelectric dam complex near Stalingrad (now Volgograd). The dam made no provision for fish ladders, instead installing a less-effective lift system only capable of transporting a few fish at a time. The dam was so placed that it curtailed the rich Sturgeon production of the region, blocking 90% of Beluga Sturgeon's spawning grounds and about half of those of other Sturgeon species.5 The USSR with its massive oil and gas reserves, exploited well before anyone paid much attention to the climate change impact of carbon emissions, would seem not to be in great need of hydroelectric generation, but preserving nature or indeed the livelihoods of Volga fishers was well down the list of priorities for the centrally planned state socialist regime.6Our collective research stemming from this initial visitation has explored the sustainability of inland fisheries in Central Eurasia, where they have been severely threatened, albeit with some development of substantial aquaculture as a response. At present, we are turning to the larger impact of dam construction on cross boundary river systems on increasingly scarce water resources for capture fisheries and the broader agricultural development in downstream populations, particularly under the jurisdiction of distinct states.For our current project, Rachael Lee is studying the Rogun Dam construction in Tajikistan and its impact on local rural populations, as well as the downstream agriculture most notably in Uzbekistan. Indeed, Uzbek President Islam Karimov famously threatened the Tajiks that he would blow up the dam if it was completed as planned. Upon his death, Karimov was succeeded by his Prime Minister, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, originally educated as an irrigation specialist, who has thus far lowered the temperature of the conflict substantially. Central Asia remains a region highly dependent on transboundary rivers for water. Numerous negotiations over plans for sharing and reducing the negative impacts on local and downstream populations and wildlife have been offered by regional and global intergovernmental institutions and NGOs, often tied to the prospect for increased development funding. Nonetheless, the sharing arrangements remain unresolved.7Maren Nicolaysen is studying the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) recently constructed on the Nile River in Ethiopia with its expected dramatic impact on agriculture in Sudan and most controversially on the fertile Nile River banks and delta of Egypt. Drinking water and related consumption needs for the metropolis of Cairo undoubtedly would be affected.GERD has the potential to provide electricity to millions, help regulate water flow during droughts, and boost regional development. However it has also fueled a complex geopolitical dispute, with roots in historical treaties, asymmetrical power relations, and the failure of existing international legal frameworks to address the competing needs and concerns of Nile Basin countries.Stealing a page from Karimov, Egyptian officials similarly warned Ethiopia that it would also take military action against the GERD. The threat of force may be overblown, but the dam construction is now complete. Unfortunately, the rounds of negotiations between the three states since 2020 have still not produced a settlement.8 Ethiopia has completed the final filling stages of GERD, leaving Egypt and Sudan to seek a legally binding framework to govern its operation.Eleanor Pugh is studying the Ili River dams, including those along the source of the river in China, especially the Fruit Valley region of Xinjiang Province, as well as the Kapchagay Dam and Reservoir built by the Soviets near Almaty, KZ in 1969. Kapchagay was built for hydroelectric generation, but with substantial impacts on the adjoining and downstream agricultural lands, including the formerly productive fishery of distant Lake Balkhash.9 The environmental effects of the Kapchagay Dam included increased pollution and salinity in the basin and alterations to its hydrological cycle, decreasing biodiversity and decimating the yield from fisheries in Lake Balkhash. Harvest from fish stocking in the Kapchagay reservoir was never able to offset reduced catch in Lake Balkash; any agricultural benefits gained from the irrigation that the dam enabled were obscured by these declines in fisheries combined with losses in animal husbandry due to dried up pastureland.Kazakh scholars point to the combination of increased Chinese irrigation draw off from the Ili due to population growth and development goals along with the current and impending impact of climate change which ultimately will reduce the flow from the melting glaciers in the Tian Shan mountains.10 These factors have lowered the water level of Lake Balkhash, akin to the environmental impacts observed on other endorheic water basins in Eurasia such as the Aral Sea, a notorious example of desiccation induced by Soviet policies leading to environmental crisis.11 Efforts to reach a water usage agreement between the two countries have yet to make substantial progress.12These are complicated cases that involve science and environmental policy assessment, as well as difficult diplomatic negotiations which have thus far not led to reasonable compromises on shared water resources. The Rogun Dam and GERD cases illustrate the challenge of finding an arrangement for sharing equitably when upstream countries have some control over the river flow to downstream countries but face a downstream government with a substantially larger population and apparent military superiority, while the case of the Ili River Dams illustrates a looming environmental crisis due to economic demands for water on both sides of an international border, with the power dynamics between upstream China and downstream Kazakhstan constraining possibilities for international agreement.13We shall tie this all together while examining other cross border river cases in Central Eurasia with some focus on the Caspian Sea Basin. We are in fact now engaged in discussions to develop a “Water Diplomacy Academy” shared between Al-Farabi Kazakh National University in Almaty, KZ and Michigan State University to examine systematically the prospects and constraints on these kinds of negotiations. Unfortunately, international law on cross-border water sharing is woefully underdeveloped and non-dispositive. For example, treaties such as the 1997 UN Watercourses Convention, which emphasizes the obligation not to cause significant harm to downstream countries, have not been signed by all the key players (viz. Ethiopia). Negotiations in all three cases have broken down at key junctures, despite the concern expressed by international institutions like the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the International Crisis Group, and the European Union, as well as a number of national governments not directly involved.The successful (just) resolution of controversies on water sharing are rare and largely relegated to Europe (e.g. the Danube) and North America (e.g. the Columbia River sharing between Canada and the U.S. which includes dams with Salmon ladders!). Can we make progress in this area, as fresh water resources seem to have become both sorely constrained and vigorously contested?14This has been and will continue to be a very important inquiry given the stakes. One can trace an important amount of our interest in it back to Bill Taylor's efforts to promote interdisciplinary assessments that make a difference to environmental sustainability. The interdisciplinary team of Michigan State researchers fully collaborating with scholars based in Central Eurasia, especially Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, will continue to address the complicated “wicked problem” of equitable and sustainable water sharing in an increasingly arid and politically divided region.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.