Samarkand Climate Forum

Central Asia (here mainly meaning Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, but also including Mongolia, Turkmenistan and more countries) is geo-politically and geo-economically a region of utmost importance due to resources, a strategic position between China and Russia, and an its important role in fighting political (in particular Islamic) extremism etc. This is why the EU has a keen interest in improving relations to the region, which for a long had underwent transition from post-socialism largely under the shadow of Russia. At the same time, the region is of importance for environmental cooperation: while there is abundant biodiversity in some places, and the mountainous regions are part of the “3rd pole” (the mountainous cryosphere of glaciers which hold in the mountains of the Himalayas, Tianshan and Central Asia as much freshwater as the North and South pole), at the same time there are huge ecological catastrophe areas, in particular the Aral Sea. Land degradation of Central Asia reached more than 20 percent. Growing populations and falling agricultural yields are a massive problem, as well as the still dominant cotton industry, which in Soviet times led to the catastrophe of the disappearance of most of the Aral sea.

This is the background for the first EU-Central Asia summit and EU-Central Asia climate summit and forum, which took place from April 3-5 in Sarmakand, Uzbekistan. Hanns Seidel Foundation (HSF) Korea, carrying out a project on promotion of the Initiative for the Central Asian Flyway (as part of the global climate network project GMACC of HSF) was invited to participate in the forum by the Embassy of Uzbekistan in Seoul to connect with hundreds of policy-makers, scientists and environmentalists to better promote the CAF initiative. The first day of the climate summit was mainly a high-level event including the presidents of Uzbekistan, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, Kyrgyzstan, Sadyr Japarov, Kazakhstan, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Tajikistan, Emomali Rahmon  and Turkmenistan, Serdar Berdimuhamedow,  as well as the EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the President of the European Council, Antonio Costa. Also, two Under-Secretary Generals of the UN (UN-Habitat and UNECE) and numerous heads of international financial and environmental institutions were there. The second day focused in a number of dedicated sessions topics like water, green growth, green energy and science-policy cooperation as well as youth participation.

Probably, the most significant result of the summit was, beside a stronger EU-Central Asia connection, a closer cooperation among the states of Central Asia themselves, For example, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, until very recently at odds over border issues, could solve them peacefully – with some moderation by Uzbekistan – and now can work together in a wide variety of fields. These fields were described and approved with the “Central Asia Green Development Strategy”: the strategy describes, how in the future the Central Asian nations want to coordinate and harmonize their policies from sustainable urban development to green growth and green energy, from sustainable afforestation to the protection of wetlands. The President of Uzbekistan, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, also proposed the start of a “Central Asian green belt” project, i.e. the plantation of a green belt of trees, thousands of kilometers long across national boundaries, to prevent further desertification of the region. While the experiences with such huge projects are mixed (the Mongolian green belt project in many places degraded, once foreign aid was withdrawn; in the former Aral Sea more than 2 million hectares were planted with drought-resistant plants, but still this is far from being enough for the area), it is a good sign that the governments of the region accept the challenge and develop their own initiatives to overcome them.

In such a setting, Europe has largely the role as a facilitator and donor, as a partner for scientific and academic exchange and as an investor. For example, the Federal Minister for Climate Change and Environmental Coordination of Pakistan, Musadik Masood Malik, invited European investment in resource industries, provided it would also benefit local communities. Naturally, a lot of such talk is declamatory and actions of governments can be very different from such statements. But the sense of crisis and urgency was strong and the EU should see this situation as a chance to strengthen relations to states, which are for many reasons important for them, beyond the economy.

For our own project, the GMACC project on support and promotion of the Initiative for a Central Asian Flyway, the resulting discussions and talks, among others with high-level interlocutors like Amy Fraenkel, Secretary-General of the Convention on Migratory Species, or President Kim Sang-Hyup of the Global Green Climate Institute, were very valuable. The focus on protection of habitats and wetlands expressed in the Central Asia Green Development Institute is an encouraging sign for a serious concern regarding these topics and also is a good argument for local initiatives to demand action from their respective local, regional or central governments.