Interview with Cleo Paskal

Cleo Paskal

Central Asia’s governments and civil society have not encouraged climate-change discussions ahead of the Copenhagen summit in December, argues Cleo Paskal, associate fellow, energy, environment and development programme, Chatham House. She tells Gulnura Toralieva why global warming is not more important to those countries, how it may affect regional security and stability and what approaches could be taken to address it.

Gulnura Toralieva (GT): Why do you think climate change is not on the agenda of developing countries and the Central Asian region in particular?

Cleo Paskal (CP): Climate change was presented by the developed world to the developing world. They’ve projected their own problems on to developing countries without really understanding what issues have importance for people in places like Central Asia. If you talk with somebody in Central Asia about climate change it doesn’t really make much sense. But if you talk with them about agriculture or water security then they understand clearly what the problems could be.

We know, for example, that Kazakhstan is desertified to about 60 per cent and with climate change it could go to about 80 per cent. And in Central Asia, we know that there are problems of water supply and food security and a range of other issues related to the environment, but what hasn’t been made clear is that climate change will affect existing environmental issues as well.

GT: Who should care about climate change and its environmental impact? Is it a problem of developed countries or the developing world?

CP: Central Asia has a long experience with environmental change. The Aral Sea is a good example, where man-made messing up of the environment has had severe environmental consequences. Climate change is a component of environmental change. You cannot address climate change alone without addressing other environmental problems. They all interconnect. This is the first thing. Then there is a question about how you handle climate change. It can be handled in two stages. You can mitigate it, to stop it from accelerating, or you can adapt to it. In most cases, people talk about mitigation and adaptation.

In the case of Central Asia, it is clear that not a lot of mitigation can be done. That economy has already been stretched thin. They have large existing industrial challenges left over from Soviet period. More critical issues for Central Asia are things like radioactive tailings and electrical and water systems. Those need to be dealt with. And if you deal with those they will help with adaptation to climate change.

Adaptation was predominantly developed in the developing world. The developing countries have had to adapt to environmental assaults for a long time. The science of adaptation is advanced in the developing world. The developed world has a lot to learn from developing countries when it comes to adaptation and the developing world really needs to start mitigation.

GT: What are the major social, political and economic implications of climate change on developing countries’ security?

CP: The developing countries are not one country. Each country has its own challenges and each region of each country has its own challenges. And that is the problem with environmental change, that it is not one problem it is a million problems. If you are in a coastal area, the problem could be flooding, it could be salt water getting into your fresh water system. If you in a dry area or desert area, it could be even dryer or you could get dust storms. If you are in mountain regions, it could be erosion or glacier melting.  

So there may be many different sorts of problems and it will take many different sorts of solutions. And I would encourage people in the developing world who have found local solutions – and there are some good local solutions – to build bridges to other developing-world countries to see what you could learn from each other. Often the solutions found in the developing world are inexpensive, low-tech, and efficient. And those are the sorts of things which will be needed globally but can be developed, implemented and expanded through the developing world quite easily right now.

GT: Kyrgyzstan, the country I’m from, has serious environmental problems such as huge toxic waste dumps caused by radioactive production. As most of the uranium tailing sites are located in densely populated and natural disaster-prone areas of Central Asia’s largest river basins, they represent a major potential risk to the region’s water supply and the health of millions of people.

The problem is exacerbated by landslides caused by frequent rainfall near uranium dumps. If it is a consequence of climate change, what can you suggest we do to mitigate the negative impacts or to prevent the catastrophe?

CP: What you are talking about is a serious issue and gets even worse because Kyrgyzstan is also in an active seismic zone and there is evidence that as glacier melting takes weight off certain areas and puts it on others that can create more seismic movements. Heavy precipitation can also get into fissures and cracks and create a build up of pressure and create more seismicity.

In many different ways, climate change can exacerbate existing problems. The first step is to understand the problem, to do a really good, ground-level survey of what existing waste dumps there are, for example, and what the likely climate change projected for the region will be. In the case of Kyrgyzstan, you have a good survey from the Soviet administration, have good scientists domestically and there are good Russian scientists who were in the country but who have left. I would encourage building bridges with all the scientists who have left to try to make sure you have all the accurate data available. Files may have disappeared; they may have gone to Moscow.

You really need to know what has happened in your country in order to figure out how to move forward in a sustainable and safe way. In science, people tend to work in their own areas. So the people who work in radioactive tailings may or may not have spoken to people working in climate change or in hydrology or whatever.

GT: In one of your publications you said that climate change may affect the stability and security of some regions. It may even have negative impact on the security of the most stable regions. What can you say about the Central Asian region?

CP: It is a funny thing that people talk about Central Asia as if it is one homogenous country with one homogenous environment. As you know, there are many different people and there are many environmental situations. Some countries have a lot of water, some countries have no water. Some countries are close to Afghanistan, some are close to China. It is not one country.

So the challenges will be different. There are commonalities obviously, but when you look at environmental change, the impact is so regional that you must understand what has happened locally.

The other thing about Central Asia is its neighbours. The countries that are neighbouring China will start to get – and already have in fact seen – an increased influence from China. China has severe environmental problems. It hasn’t got enough water or food for its own population. So it will look to Siberia or appropriate countries in Central Asia to secure food and possibly water supplies. When China goes into a country, it is likely to want to ensure a degree of political control. That can affect your security situation.

Environmental change may also affect the security situation at a basic level if there is not enough food and water for the local population. There are potential areas where security can be compromised. We used to think about Central Asia firstly as a part of the Soviet Union but it is really an important component of global balance that is focused in a volatile area with Afghanistan, Russia and China and, to a certain degree, India also.

GT: What can Central Asian countries and Kyrgyzstan in particular address at the global climate change conference in Copenhagen in December?

CP: Kyrgyzstan hasn’t got an accurate understanding of its own problems and figuring out what it needs to address those problems and to ensure that those needs are met is important. It is in the interest of the developed world for the developing world to be as stable as possible. And if the developing world can clearly state “This is what we need” then that will be helpful to create global stability.

GT: The Central Asian states have many disagreements on energy and water sharing issues. The Soviet energy system united all five regional states, but doesn’t suit the interests of all these countries. Upstream and downstream countries always have room for being dissatisfied with each other’s policy.

Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan said recently that they are going to leave the Soviet-made system. Most of the countries work on developing their own energy systems and finding ways to be independent. But it is expensive and in some ways not possible. What is your view of this problem? What kind of implications does this situation have on regional stability?

CP: It is a serious problem. There are many serious problems. When the Soviet Union fell apart, it left Central Asia with three legacies, with three different problems which made unification or regional stability a little difficult.

One is that the infrastructure was designed for a whole – not just for a regional whole but a pan-Soviet whole. So the physical infrastructure was designed to be able to enforce co-operation even if it really doesn’t make sense.

The legal infrastructure has a similar problem. And the most obvious example is the borders, which divide tribes and language groups. The inherited legal infrastructure can cause problems when it comes to water- and power-sharing agreements.

Third is that Central Asian countries start to get real cultural polarisation and social fragmentation and then it becomes difficult to get over and it makes all the things more difficult. There is no feeling that you are all together. That’s why countries might think “Why should I deal with this country, if I have nothing in common with it except ancient history? Why can’t I deal with China or Russia instead?” Social cohesion comes first. If social cohesion starts to break apart, all the relations become difficult.

The existing system has some serious problems. It is old; it hasn’t been properly maintained and it was designed for a different environment. When you build such constructions you make environmental assessments: how much water is in the rivers, how much rainfall and so on and you look to the last 50 or 100 years to make these calculations. Those calculations no longer mean anything. The next 50 to 100 years will probably be very different from previous decades. That hydro installation you built which made perfect sense in 1980 may already make no sense today because of increased sedimentation, changing precipitation or glacier runoff.

The existing infrastructure you have may be severely affected by the environment. That old-build infrastructure may in no way be suitable to the new environment. The question is, in designing the new infrastructure, are they taking into account environmental change. Or are they designing it in the same way as they always design it. I suspect they don’t take environmental change into account. I’m not sure that this infrastructure will be able to deliver. It is important to take into account environmental change for both new and old infrastructure.