Water experts, government representatives and development partners from across Central Asia gathered in Tashkent on 17 June 2026 for a regional workshop on Advancing Environmental Flows in Central Asia: From Expert Assessment to Practical Implementation. Held in hybrid format and organized under the Blue Peace Central Asia project, the workshop brought together specialists from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan to advance the region's shift from traditional, engineering- and resource-based water management toward integrated approaches that keep enough water in rivers to sustain ecosystems.
At the heart of the meeting were the results of a comprehensive comparative assessment of the institutional, legal, scientific and technical readiness of the five countries to implement environmental flows (E-flows). Carried out by IWMI under the BPCA Programme, the assessment maps each country's readiness profile and identifies the legal, institutional, methodological and technical barriers that still stand in the way — offering, for the first time, a shared regional picture of where the countries stand and what they need to move forward.
Opened by Ashanti Bleich, Regional Program officer at Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and moderated by Nazokat Isaeva, Deputy Project Lead at IUCN, the day combined expert analysis with country contributions and hands-on tools. Regional experts Igor Shenberger and Denis Sorokin presented the readiness findings, the bilingual (English–Russian) Environmental Flow Glossary and its prototype web application, and the IWMI Environmental Flow Calculator, while delegates from each country, together with a presentation on E-flow activities under the Caritas project in Uzbekistan, shared national experience. Participants also reviewed a draft Regional Roadmap for Environmental Flow Implementation and a concept for a regional Community of Practice (CoP) on E-Flows.
The discussions were designed to turn analysis into action: identifying pilot river basins for testing the IWMI Environmental Flow Calculator, gathering inputs to refine the Roadmap and the CoP concept, and laying the foundations to institutionalize environmental flows as a standard part of water resources planning. By establishing a community of practice to sustain knowledge exchange and harmonize methodologies, the workshop marked an important step toward ensuring that environmental flows become an integral component of how Central Asia manages its shared rivers.
