Synopsis The 'water issue' is emerging as one of the most prominent issues in international discussions and conferences concerned with sustainable development and the agenda for the twenty-first century. In this book, authors from different countries and professional backgrounds have cooperated to present a comprehensive picture of irrigation and water management in the mountainous regions of South and Central Asia. This region, spreading from the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union to the Eastern Himalayas and Bhutan, has been covered for the first time in this work. Moreover, the book provides a new discussion about methods and working techniques in doing field research, taking into account, again for the first time, the empirical evidence from case studies.