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This paper tells the story of trade-off between hydropower and irrigation and its implications for groundwater use in Syrdarya basin in Central Asia. With the independence of the central Asian republics, this trade-off has become a transboundary issue. Efforts to coordinate bilateral action using integrated water resources management (IWRM) principles of basin-wide cooperation have not yet yielded the hoped for results. This paper shows that there could be a 'second best' option of solving at least part of this transboundary problem by 'banking' winter flows released for hydropower production in Kyrgyzstan in the underground aquifers of Uzbekistan's Fergana Valley and extracting it for irrigation in the summer months. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a partial reconceptualization and a redesign of the Framework of Hydro-Hegemony, an analytical tool devised to study how power, hegemony, and power asymmetries can influence transboundary water politics. This is done by presenting the original Circle of Hydro-Hegemony (CHH), an analytical framework that places the neo-Gramscian notion of hegemony at the centre of its structure, to illustrate how various forms of power are connective in the function of hegemony. Following a theoretical discussion on how the concepts of power and hegemony can interact, the case of the Aral Sea basin in Central Asia provides a practical application of the CHH to transboundary water politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information technologies can act as technical artifacts and can facilitate stakeholder communication, supporting decision making in a complex societal context. The water sector is one such example where limited water resources are threatened by climate change and growing competition for resources between sectors, regions and countries. Attempts to improve water governance and management through information technologies have been made by international, regional and national water agencies for the last 20 years in Central Asia. However, early attempts were focused on collection, systematization and analysis of the generic data related to the water sector in the region. There are still significant gaps (technical, human and financial capacities) for application of such technologies at the lower operational levels of water management, i.e. where the full dimensions of variables, interactions and complexities are observed and, most importantly, everyday politics of water are performed. The aim of this paper is to present practical results on improving water management in Central Asia through the application of better data management tools at the operational level across diverse institutional settings, i.e. transboundary, watershed levels in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]