In Dushanbe, a chance to get the Water Action Agenda back on track

As of December last year, the Water Action Agenda compiles 832 voluntary commitments by nations and other stakeholder groups to accelerating progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals connected to freshwater. 

One year on from the Water Action Agenda's adoption, there is still no mechanism in place for either funding or tracking the implementation of these commitments, the voluntary nature of which also makes them non-binding. 

It is hoped that progress can be tracked in Dushanbe via the planned dialogue with policy-makers at this third High-Level International Conference on the International Decade for Action: Water for Sustainable Development (2018–2028).

After this conference, there will be another two to monitor the last few years of implementation of the Decade and of the Water Action Agenda. The first of these conferences in 2026 will be co-chaired by Senegal and the United Arab Emirates and the second in 2028 will take place once more in Dushanbe. 

UNESCO will be showcasing a project in Dushanbe this week which is putting an early warning system in place in Central Asia to protect communities in the valley from the growing threat of overflowing glacial lakes suddenly bursting their banks and sending an avalanche of rocks and water down the mountainside.

One focus of the voluntary commitments in the Water Action Agenda is the preservation of the cryosphere. It is shrinking as a consequence of climate change, raising the spectre of future water shortages. For example, the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative, a non-governmental organization, has committed in the Water Action Agenda to working towards this goal over a one-year period. 

For their part, UNESCO and the World Meteorological Organization are responsible for facilitating implementation of the International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation in 2025, following the adoption, last year, by the United Nations General Assembly of a resolution led by Tajikistan and supported by many countries. The Director-General of UNESCO, Audrey Azoulay, addressed this topic on 10 June at the high-level Glacier Forum which opened the conference.

The shrinking cryosphere is of particular concern to Central Asia, as the region’s main river systems are dependent on the seasonal melt of snow and ice. With climate change, the glaciers are shrinking from one year to the next. These melting glaciers will initially supply larger quantities of water but the flow will gradually decline as their volume decreases. 

Through its Almaty office, UNESCO is implementing a project which will enable Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan to share their experience of monitoring the cryosphere in their respective countries, including as concerns the impact of melting glaciers on the availability of water. This pooling of knowledge will then inform the design of national and regional strategies for adapting to climate change. This project is being implemented by UNESCO, in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme and the Global Environmental Facility.

Water shortages are not the only threat that Central Asia faces. At a side event in Dushanbe on 12 June, UNESCO will be showcasing another project which is putting early warning systems in place between 2021 and 2026 to reduce the vulnerability of populations in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to glacier lake outburst floods. This project benefits from US$6.5 million from the Adaptation Fund. 

Imagine the contents of an entire lake suddenly cascading down a mountain towards you. This type of disaster scenario is not science fiction. It has happened before and, with climate change causing glaciers to melt, glacial lakes are filling up, making outburst floods more likely. In the past three decades, there have been more than 30 outburst floods in Central Asia. 

Outburst floods not only release huge amounts of water with little or no warning. They can also cause damage in areas situated hundreds of kilometres downstream of the glacier and even across the border. For instance, an outburst flood in 1998 caused more than 100 fatalities in Uzbekistan and damaged 5,000 houses in Kyrgyzstan. 

Another outburst flood in July 2015 was triggered by exceptionally high summer temperatures. Rapidly melting glacier ice triggered mudflows in the mountainous regions of Tajikistan. Over the same summer, meltwater from a glacier near Almaty, Kazakhstan, caused the evacuation of over 1,000 people and injured another 78. Some 127 houses were damaged by the avalanche of rocks and water.

More recently, a rapid injection of meltwater from the Aksai glacier in northern Kyrgyzstan triggered an outburst flood that damaged houses and roads in villages in the valley. The lake still poses an ominous threat to the capital city of Bishkek, which has a population of almost 1 million.

Experts estimate that there are more than 1,000 dangerous glacial lakes in Central Asia which pose a threat to nearly 100,000 inhabitants of mountainous regions. 

Within the project supported by the Adaptation Fund, UNESCO is putting advanced early warning systems in place to alert people to any impending threat. This project should benefit over 53,000 people in all four countries. 

Currently, the project team is working with national institutions to design an early warning system for each of four pilot areas, one in each participating country. These pilot areas were chosen through consultations with the government and local communities. Both the technical specifications for the equipment and its location have been tailored to each pilot area, as have the vital communication channels which will relay any alert to the population.

Twenty-three local experts, including 10 women, were then trained in 2022 in how to use the RAMMS software to model potential outburst floods. These experts work for 17 national institutions in the four participating countries which are now equipped with four-year licenses for the RAMMS software.

Scientists have since used this software to model the path that potential outburst floods might take and determine which communities might be threatened by the flow of debris, working in collaboration with the local authorities.