Staunton, March 22 – On the occasion of World Water Resources Day, the Asia-Plus news agency, noting that Tajikistan has the largest reserves of fresh water, most of it frozen in glaciers, featured an article on just how large a reserve that is and what it would mean if they melt (ia-centr.ru/publications/tayushchaya-krasota-chto-budet-esli-vse-ledniki-tadzhikistana-rastayut/).
According to the agency, the country’s glaciers have frozen within them 500 cubic kilometers. They cover 7820 square kilometers, three times the area of the city of Moscow and 62 times that of Dushanbe. And if they melt, they could fill Lake Baikal six times over and Lake Onega 1.5 times.
Other than its people, of course, this water is Tajikistan’s greatest resource, providing it with important leverage on other countries in Central Asia and making it a target for those, like China and some groups in Afghanistan, that would like to gain control of this source of increasingly scarce potable water.