Climate Change in Central Asia

Overview¹

Since all the Central Asian countries rely heavily on irrigated agriculture, climate change is closely linked to water availability, energy security, and sustainable development in the region. The desiccation of the Aral Sea as a result of irrigated agriculture in Central Asia’s downstream countries, and the socio-economic and health problems that have resulted in communities close to the Aral Sea–problems that are likely to get worse if climate change further increases temperatures and aridity in the region–illustrate these linkages in sharp detail.

All five countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan) have begun to establish the legal and regulatory frameworks needed for meeting their commitments under the UN Framework for Combating Climate Change (UNFCCC). As most are non-Annex I countries under the UNFCCC, their commitments are limited to measuring their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, as well as conducting vulnerability and mitigation studies. Fortunately, the Kyoto Protocol has opened up carbon finance and other development opportunities for these countries, via their potential participation in GHG mitigation projects under the clean development mechanism (CDM). However, despite progress by Uzbekistan in this area, no Central Asian country has yet succeeded in registering a project with the CDM Executive Board.

Climate change and water in Central Asia

Due to population growth, aridity, the importance of irrigation for the cultivation of water-intensive crops like cotton and rice, and the shared nature of the region’s water resources, water is at the heart of Central Asia’s development challenges. In addition to a Soviet legacy of desiccation of the Aral Sea by the unsustainable diversion of Amu-Darya and Syr-Darya river waters in support of Central Asia’s cotton monoculture, serious problems of flooding, salinity, and water logging reduce agricultural productivity across the region. Water quality in Central Asia has drastically deteriorated since the 1960s, due to large discharges of polluted water through drainage systems into the Aral Sea basin.²

Climate change is expected to exacerbate further water scarcity in the region and the problems of the Aral Sea. Rising temperatures are already melting 46 of Central Asia’s glaciers (see Figure 1). The Pamir-Alai glaciers lost 19 percent of their mass during the second half of the 20th century; glacier coverage in various parts of the Tien Shan, Gissaro-Alai, Pamir, Dzhungarskiy, and Zailiyskiy Alatau mountains is currently shrinking at the average rate of about 1 percent annually. This melt will ultimately reduce water flow in the Amu-Darya and Syr-Darya rivers by up to 40 and 30 percent, respectively. Incre?asing frequency of droughts and reduced agricultural productivity are also widely predicted (UNDP 2005).

Figure 1—Projected degradation of glaciers by 2050

Source: Tajikistan 2002: State of the Environment Report (http://www.caresd.net/site.html? en=0*id=13).

Carbon profiles in Central Asia

As the data in Figures 2 and 3 below show, the Central Asian countries have quite different carbon profiles. Although all five countries inherited energy-inefficient industrial structures from the Soviet period, annual GHG emissions produced by Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan declined sharply in the 1990s, due to large declines in industrial production and economic restructuring. However, they increased in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan–and in Turkmenistan, this increase exceeded the global average. Thanks to rapid growth in its coal, oil, and gas industries, and its reliance on coal-fired power plants, Kazakhstan has become one of the world’s three dozen largest GHG emitters; per-capita GHG emissions in Kazakhstan, as well as in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, are now well above global averages. By contrast, because GDP and industrial output have not yet returned to pre-1990 levels, and since hydroelectricity plays a large role in their energy balances, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan continue to report per-capita CO2 emissions that are below global averages.

Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan could benefit extensively from carbon financed ‘green investments’ funded by developed countries under the Kyoto Protocol’s clean development mechanism. Within the region, Uzbekistan has made the most progress in developing an enabling environment for carbon finance. However, all five countries could benefit significantly from energy efficiency measures, in order to reduce energy intensities that remain well above the levels reported in China, not to mention in the OECD countries. For Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in particular, where residents in many mountain communities do not have access to electricity, improving the business and investment climates, in order to attract foreign and domestic capital into electricity production, generation, and distribution–including small-scale investments in renewable energy technologies–is key to reducing poverty and improving living standards.

Figure 2—Changes in annual GHG emissions in Central Asia (1990-2004)

Source: UNDP Human Development Report Office

Climate change adaptation in Central Asia

Kazakhstan is among the world’s three dozen largest GHG emitters, and emissions per dollar of GDP produced in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are among the world’s highest. Still, none of the Central Asian countries can rely solely on national mitigation efforts to reduce the threats posed by climate change. Measures to adapt to these threats must therefore lie at the heart of Central Asia’s response. Important adaptation measures include:
• in-depth research on climate change, its impacts on natural resources, economic activity, and public health, leading to the design and implementation of appropriate adaptation measures;
• improvements in environmental monitoring and measuring systems to better track changes in temperature, precipitation, water flow, and glacier melt;
• development of analytical and institutional capacities to use the data produced by these systems for better meteorological forecasting, climate modelling, and early warning purposes, as well as for environmental impact and health assessments, land-use planning, and better water infrastructure management.

Figure 3—Per-capita CO2 emissions in Central Asia (tons)

Source: UNDP Human Development Report Office

Linkages between climate change and water issues in Central Asia underscore the importance of water management in national adaptation strategies. Improvements in the efficiency of irrigation systems (per-capita water consumption rates in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are among the world’s highest) could produce large savings in water use, thereby reducing the worst of the climate change risks. Specific measures here include:
• lining irrigation canals to reduce seepage losses (up to 40 percent of diverted water is lost from these canals);
• reducing the use of irrigation by inefficient flooding methods, which produces significant unintentional flooding, water logging, and salinization in surrounding areas;
• increasing the cultivation of more highly valued and less water-intensive fruit and vegetable crops, at the expense of cotton and other less sustainable agricultural activities; and
• expanding the use of more modern, efficient drip and below-ground irrigation systems.

Should melting glaciers reduce water flow in the Syr-Darya and Amu-Darya rivers and damage hydroelectricity prospects for Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, the accelerated adoption of energy efficiency measures in these countries could be essential to preventing sharp reductions in electricity production. If such measures are not undertaken, the collapse of Tajikistan’s electrical energy infrastructure during the winter of 2007-2008 could be a harbinger of the future.

Conclusions

Melting glaciers, the desiccation of the Aral Sea, and the collapse of Tajikistan’s electricity infrastructure during the harsh winter of 2007-2008, show the close links between climate change, water, energy security, and development in Central Asia. A potential violent conflict over scarce water resources in the region has long been mooted by experts. The accelerated adoption of measures to reduce the wasteful use of water and energy, and encourage more sustainable forms of agricultural development, is central to the region’s stability and development prospects. So are measures to improve the business and investment climates for investment–domestic and foreign–to modernize electrical energy sectors, including especially investments in renewable energy technologies. Prospects for investments funded in part by carbon finance under the Kyoto Protocol’s clean development mechanism are also linked to improvements in business and investment climates in Central Asia.

As market liberalization and higher prices for electricity and water service delivery (particularly for irrigated agriculture) must inevitably play a role in these reforms, these measures need to be accompanied by efforts to better target social assistance, to provide greater protection for those most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. The national development and poverty reduction strategies now being designed and implemented in Central Asia–often with the support of the international community–should ideally reflect the linkages between climate change and poverty alleviation.

Renat Perelet is Research Leader in the Institute for Systems Analysis, Russian Academy of Sciences.