Lessons from Central Asia and the Middle East show that navigating politics, not just rivers, is central to effective transboundary water management.
In sustainable development, “scaling” solutions are an absolute necessity for driving real change — whether that is to support food and water security, climate resilience or other development goals. The aim is to take successful pilot projects, say, a smart irrigation system on a farm or a village solar pump, and expand them to cover entire regions. But when those regions cross national borders, scaling stops being just a technical challenge and becomes a diplomatic one.
This was the central theme of a webinar on the theme of Scaling for Impact, the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) organised together with partners in November 2025. Experts from the Middle East and Central Asia converged to discuss a hard truth: even the best technical models will remain on the shelf without strong governance and cross-border cooperation.
The session opened with a powerful reality check from Hazem Al Nasser, Founder and Chairman of the Middle East Water Forum and Jordan’s former Minister of Water and Irrigation. Drawing on decades of experience in one of the world’s most water-stressed regions, he described the Water-Energy-Food-Environment (WEFE) nexus not just as a scientific framework, but as a tool for “hydro-diplomacy”.
Al Nasser stated that while technical solutions are essential, they are often held hostage by politics. He contrasted two telling examples.
The Danube River serves as a success story, where a robust management plan successfully integrates navigation, agriculture, and power generation across multiple nations, because the political will and governance structures are aligned through the Danube Commission and the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River.
By contrast, the stalled Red Sea-Dead Sea Canal project acts as a cautionary tale. As Al Nasser explained, this project had “all the elements of a successful nexus project”: provision of drinking water for Jordan, Israel and Palestine; hydropower generation; integrated development along the route of the canal; and environmental protection for the Dead Sea. Yet, it reached a standstill, “because political overtones were stronger than the technicalities of the WEFE nexus.” His message was clear: scaling beyond borders requires us to navigate the enabling environment of international law and politics as much as the hydrology.
Central Asia: From Fragmentation to Shared Futures
So, how do we break through these political barriers? Zafar Gafurov, a researcher with IWMI in Central Asia, offered a roadmap based on the region’s experience with the Amu Darya-Syr Darya basin. Central Asia faces a classic nexus dilemma: upstream countries control the water and store it for producing hydroelectric power for heat in the cold winter months, while downstream countries need that water for agriculture during the dry summer season.
Gafurov emphasised that scaling is not just about geographic expansion; it is about transformational governance. He highlighted three distinct pathways for scaling that are currently being tested in the region.
The first pathway is institutional scaling, which stipulates that it is not enough to build a model; it must be embedded in the organisations that make decisions. For instance, Gafurov and team have worked directly with Uzbekistan’s Ministry of Water Resources and the Scientific Information Center of the Interstate Commission for Water Coordination of Central Asia to integrate nexus tools into their operational planning, ensuring they outlive any single project cycle.
Second, in transboundary contexts, data transparency is the currency of trust. To address this, the team developed a digital water intelligence platform titled NEXAR — Next-Generation Water Monitoring System for Arid Zones — which was piloted in Uzbekistan’s Kashkadarya region. Unlike fragmented legacy systems, NEXAR integrates satellite observations, hydrological measurements and agricultural indicators into a single unified dashboard. It enables users to track critical metrics like seasonal water availability, drought stress and reservoir storage in real-time. By establishing data protocols with regional bodies like Basin Water Organisations (BWOs), countries can agree on this foundational data, paving the way for agreed management of the region’s shared water.
Finally, perhaps the most innovative point was Gafurov’s focus on knowledge scaling and shifting mindsets. When a project ends, the tools are often lost. To prevent this, the initiative has developed a “nexus curriculum” for local universities, such as the Tashkent Institute of Irrigation and Agricultural Mechanisation Engineers, which acts as a regional training hub. By training the next generation of engineers and policymakers to think in nexus terms from day one, they are effectively scaling the mindset needed for future cooperation.
Bottom-up Diplomacy
The webinar also highlighted the power of smaller, bottom-up successes. Al Nasser mentioned a successful initiative driven by Uganda within the Nile Basin, focused on engaging youth and women in agricultural trade among riparian countries. By increasing production in abundant regions and facilitating the trade of surplus produce across borders to neighbours in need, the project built a functional nexus solution from the ground up, bypassing some of the high-level political gridlock that often paralyses the Nile River’s governance.
Applying a similar “bottom-up” strategy in Central Asia, researchers are mapping small transboundary tributaries in the Fergana Valley, watersheds that often lack formal legal frameworks. By developing prototype water-sharing agreements for these smaller rivers, the team aims to create a proof of concept for cooperation that can eventually be scaled to the region’s larger, more contested river systems.
Scaling WEFE nexus solutions is a journey of governance transformation. Whether it is through high-level hydro-diplomacy or foundational curriculum development, the goal is the same: to move from fragmented, sector-specific to a shared, evidence-based management.
The authors: Hazem Al Nasser is the former Minister of Water and Irrigation of Jordan and Founder and Chairman of the Middle East Water Forum, and Zafar Gafurov is a Senior Regional Researcher at IWMI based in Central Asia.
Source: https://tinyurl.com/495f356x
