This co-edited volume provides a unified scholarly treatment of intensifying debates on the relationship between water scarcity and environmental security in Central Eurasia. Using discussions of sustainable rural development as its conceptual backdrop, the chapters in this volume combine solid empirical investigation with critical analysis of key concepts such as scarcity, expert knowledge, and efficiency. The central theme emerging from the contributions emphasizes the need to reevaluate accepted wisdom in resource studies that considers distributional conflicts over water usage as inherently zero-sum outcomes in which one players gains inevitably correspond to another players losses. Instead, the empirical and critical analyses in this book demonstrate that effective management of water resources can be re-conceptualized as the basis for regional cooperation and sustainable rural development.