International actors and initiatives for sustainable water management

International actors over the past 30 years have supported sustainable water management in Central Asia at various levels and in different fields-ranging from technical projects and infrastructure investments to institutional reforms, capacity development, scientific cooperation and political dialogue. This chapter provides an overview on their engagement and analyses the main actors’ rationales, priorities, tools of their programmes and impact. It is shown that the impact of these activities is modest-partly related to the nature of donor projects, like lack of regional expertise, application of blueprint models and insufficient coordination; partly because the political context in Central Asia limits effectiveness of international activities, like lack of political will, hierarchical decision-making cultures and capacity gaps. Based on the analysis, the authors conclude that international engagement could become more impactful by (1) building upon and further developing local knowledge, (2) orienting at a long-term programmatic perspective and (3) taking into account the technical-political interdependencies of water management in Central Asia.