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Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has called for the development of a comprehensive roadmap for water sector reforms in Armenia, saying the country faces major challenges in access to drinking and irrigation water, wastewater treatment, water storage and the efficient use of water resources.
Speaking at a workshop titled “Water Sector Reforms 2026–2031,” Pashinyan said the reforms should aim to ensure full and round-the-clock access to drinking water, expand access to irrigation, make better use of water resources for economic development, and create a more efficient system for managing and investing in the sector.
“We need to make several observations when talking about the water sector. First, today there is not a single settlement in Armenia that does not have significant and tangible problems related to drinking water. Today, there is not a single settlement in Armenia that does not have significant and tangible problems related to irrigation water. Today, only a small part of Armenia’s arable land, orchards and plantations has access to irrigation. In other words, most of our arable land has no access to irrigation at all. In those areas where irrigation is available, irrigation technologies and quality are a separate issue for discussion. If we look at it by 21st-century standards, the amount of water needed to irrigate orchards covering dozens of hectares is used by us to irrigate orchards covering just a few hectares. And this is the next very important part of the problem,” he said.
He added that thousands of hectares of land in Armenia remain unused.
“It is obvious that thousands of hectares of orchards could be established there, where tens of thousands of tons of crops could be produced, but we are unable to solve this problem because even agricultural land that is usable and is being used does not have access to water,” the Prime Minister elaborated.
Pashinyan added that another global problem is that wastewater treatment is not the rule but rather the exception. Obviously, such an approach to water use is unacceptable, as it inevitably has consequences.
The Prime Minister emphasized that Armenia has more than sufficient water resources, in theory, to solve the problems he mentioned.
“One of the key issues of our discussion today is how and through what roadmap we can get from the point we have identified today to a point where water is accessible in all parts of Armenia where access to it is necessary. We are talking about ensuring full and round-the-clock access to drinking water in settlements. Second, access to irrigation water in all settlements. And this is also a very important part of organizing urban and settlement life. And third, access to water in all those places where it can lead to economic development, that is, create added value,” Pashinyan said.
He stressed that this also gives rise to two global challenges, which are directly or indirectly recorded in the Government’s program or in Armenia’s doctrine of economic and institutional transformation.
“The first problem is the following: we must strive to and reach a point where no amount of used water is discharged into nature without treatment. Many environmental and health problems that we face today are directly related to this issue, that treating used water is not the rule but rather an exception. The second global issue that we need to discuss and develop ideas for addressing is how to accumulate the water resources generated in Armenia and what the most effective form of accumulation is. This is the framework that we need to discuss today, but we did not start discussions on this today. We considered it important, however, to establish a starting point where we formulate this agenda with the participation of representatives of the legislative and executive branches, the expert community, the private sector and communities,” he said.
He stressed that the discussion should have a very important practical outcome: a roadmap for the upcoming actions on water sector reforms should be developed, but for this roadmap to be practical, it must be maximally honest and feasible.
“What do I mean by honest? Ultimately, we need to face the fact that some of the problems I mentioned are related to our general dismissive attitude toward water — ‘it’s just water, what is so special about it?’ But the problem is that all the distinctiveness is concentrated precisely in water, and we need to have an appropriate attitude toward it, including at the socio-psychological, individual and household levels, at all levels. But we also need to have an appropriate economic attitude toward water. Today, water tariffs in Armenia reflect our attitude toward water. We live in Armenia, which has a Soviet legacy, where it was essentially recorded that water was free or very cheap, but water has never been free or very cheap. But we must acknowledge that we will not complete the chain I mentioned if there is no determination of the system’s cost-efficiency formula. Without this, it is simply impossible,” he said, adding that first an objective tariff must be determined and then consideration must be given to what portion of that tariff should be paid by whom and how.
“I want us to clearly distinguish this as well: the tariff is one issue, while the formulas for paying the tariff are a second issue. Next, we must ultimately liberalize the water market. Today, in the irrigation sector, for example, we have set a price, half of which the government subsidizes, but the set price does not reflect reality. But there is also another problem. Today, there are businesses and investors in Armenia who say: we pay for water, sell us water. It seems like a simple and logical economic question, but in reality these opportunities are limited in Armenia, at least because of our existing regulations. We must also be able to create a water market in Armenia, and this is the reform that will also encourage private investment in the water sector, because if there is an opportunity, a system and a certain policy message that investment can be made in the water sector, and particularly that irrigation water can be an object of market relations, this can also significantly change the situation, perception and attitude,” the Prime Minister concluded.