Kazakhstan Environment - The Times Of Central Asia

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Caspian Sea

Japan Funds $3 Million Caspian Sea Monitoring Project in Kazakhstan

Japan is funding a $3 million project to improve monitoring of the shrinking Caspian Sea, focusing particularly on Kazakhstan’s shallow northern basin. The project, implemented by the United Nations Development Programme in partnership with Kazakhstan, was officially launched in Aktau on October 5. Experts from across the Caspian region are expected to take part in joint research and a regional scientific platform designed to improve the exchange of data and expertise. For Kazakhstan, the most immediate problem lies in the northern Caspian. The water there is extremely shallow, meaning that even relatively small declines in sea level can push the shoreline back considerable distances. Habitats used by Caspian seals and sturgeon are already changing, while ports and shipping face growing difficulties. Scientists link the decline to changes in the Caspian Sea’s water balance. The sea has no connection to the world’s oceans and depends on river inflow, precipitation, and evaporation. The Volga supplies most of its river water, while rising temperatures are increasing evaporation. In July 2025, the Caspian was reported to have fallen to its lowest level in the instrumental record. The Times of Central Asia reported that the shallow northeastern section along Kazakhstan and Russia was retreating particularly rapidly. The consequences could become far greater than the shoreline retreat already visible today. A study published in Communications Earth & Environment found that a five-meter decline from the study’s reference level could turn about 77,000 square kilometers of the Caspian’s current water surface into land, equivalent to around one-fifth of its present area. The northern basin would be among the areas most severely affected. The new project is intended to provide a clearer picture of how the decline is unfolding. Specialists will assess Kazakhstan’s existing observation network along the northern Caspian and identify where additional monitoring sites and modern equipment are needed. Sea level and river-flow measurements will be combined with data on temperature, salinity, evaporation, weather conditions, seabed depth, and satellite observations to improve projections of future changes. Kazakhstan is also tracking the volume of water reaching the Caspian. According to data from the Zhaiyk-Caspian basin inspectorate cited by the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation, 6.16 billion cubic meters had reached the sea since the start of 2026. Over the previous two and a half years, the total exceeded 35 billion cubic meters, including more than 17 billion during the exceptional floods of 2024.

Water Security

Opinion: Central Asia’s Old Water Bargain Was Built for Cotton

Central Asia inherited a water bargain built for another economy. In the Soviet system, upstream republics stored water and released it for summer irrigation. Downstream republics used that flow for cotton and other crops. The cost of the exchange stayed inside one plan. Water releases, electricity, fuel, and crop quotas were part of the same political economy. After 1991, the dependence survived, but the plan that balanced it did not. The 1998 Syr Darya agreement already tied reservoir operation to irrigation releases and set compensation for the winter power Kyrgyzstan gave up. The 2000 Chu-Talas agreement went on to share the cost of operating and maintaining shared water infrastructure between Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Those agreements were important, and they show why today’s dispute is not new. Central Asia has long known that water regulation carries a cost. What it has not built is a wider settlement that prices storage and seasonal regulation under today’s climate, energy, and market conditions. That question is now open again. In January 2026, Kyrgyzstan’s new Water Code came into force. It recognizes water as a commodity and introduces fees for domestic and external users. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have rejected payment for transboundary river water, saying existing agreements do not provide for it. Downstream governments fear an open-ended bill and a precedent that could turn every dry season into a financial dispute. The old model rested on cotton and central planning. Several conditions have changed. The climate is less stable, energy demand keeps rising, and national economies now want more from water than a cotton plan once did. Uzbekistan’s own reform language has turned against the old cotton model. At the UN General Assembly in 2023, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev said “millions of people were forced to pick cotton” in Uzbekistan over a century. In August 2026, he called the old system one that left Uzbeks “slaves to cotton.” That history shapes the water argument. Uzbekistan is not abolishing cotton. It still grows the crop and continues to reform the sector. But as Tashkent moves away from the old cotton-centered model, the regional water logic built around that model also needs revising. The same pressure runs through the Amu Darya, where agricultural adaptation has become an economic and political issue rather than a purely hydrological one. Less predictable river flows make seasonal storage more valuable. Water is also becoming scarcer in parts of the region. Kyrgyzstan sits at the center of that question. It is the only country in Central Asia whose water resources are almost entirely formed within its own territory, and Kyrgyz officials argue that it carries the upkeep for infrastructure that serves its neighbors. They say the country spent about $80 million on the water sector last year and around $259 million over five years. That spending covers the water sector as a whole, including infrastructure whose benefits reach beyond Kyrgyzstan’s borders. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan reject paying for river water, saying existing agreements do not require it. But storing that water and releasing it...

Water Governance

“Water Insecurity Is Not Experienced Equally”: Why Scarcity Is Also a Social Problem

A water crisis begins long before a river runs dry. Across Central and South Asia, retreating glaciers and the overuse of groundwater are putting supplies under growing pressure. Environmental sociologist Devendraraj Madhanagopal argues that the more revealing question is often who gets the water that remains. An assistant professor at XIM University’s School of Sustainability, Madhanagopal has studied climate adaptation among fishing communities on India’s southern coast. In an interview with The Times of Central Asia, he draws on that research to discuss why water scarcity can deepen social inequalities in the Aral Sea region. Giving local people more responsibility for managing water without the resources or authority to act, he warns, can make matters worse. TCA: Glacier retreat and changes in snow cover are increasingly affecting water security in both Central and South Asia. However, these processes are often discussed mainly from environmental or hydrological perspectives. In your view, which social consequences are currently underestimated? How could changing water availability affect local communities, agriculture, employment, and migration? Dr. Madhanagopal: Before discussing the availability of water at the country, regional, or continental level, we also need to focus on the social and cultural dimensions of water and on how available water is distributed among different social groups. Communities have historically developed customary institutions, informal rules, practices and local leadership structures to share and distribute water resources. Many of these arrangements have gradually weakened over recent decades in Asia with the rise of resource-intensive development. At the same time, governments in India and Central Asia, including Kazakhstan, have increasingly recognized that water security requires the effective management of complex and interconnected systems. Institutions have been established, and governments increasingly seek support from think tanks, research organizations, and NGOs to address the socio-political and governance dimensions of water management. Nevertheless, significant knowledge and governance gaps remain. Glacier retreat and changes in snow cover are receiving increasing attention from scientists and policymakers. However, discussions about water governance still tend to focus on macro-level transboundary disputes, glacier retreat, and technocentric adaptation, including efficiency improvements and infrastructure. Much less attention is given to social inequalities, power, politics, and conflicts over access to water. This matters because water insecurity is not experienced equally. We need to ask who gets access to water, who bears the burden of scarcity, and how marginalized groups experience water insecurity. Lessons from previous water conflicts and governance failures have not always been adequately incorporated into planning and monitoring in India and many Central Asian countries. We also often view Central Asia primarily through geopolitical frameworks rather than environmental ones. Policy discussions should pay greater attention to interconnected river basins and the diverse environmental conditions across the region. Research and policymaking should examine how climate change and water insecurity affect agriculture, employment, and migration at both local and regional levels. Policymakers should also recognize that water insecurity can intensify local conflicts over shared resources and exacerbate existing inequalities, including gender inequality. These challenges ultimately require localized as well as regional responses. [caption...

Nature Investment

Opinion: Financing Nature: Why Biodiversity Investment Matters for Central Asia

Just imagine: only 50 years ago, wildlife was far more abundant across many of the world’s forests, grasslands, rivers, and seas. According to the World Wide Fund for Nature’s Living Planet Report 2024, the average size of monitored vertebrate populations fell by 73% between 1970 and 2020, based on data from almost 35,000 populations worldwide. That extraordinary decline has taken place within a single human lifetime. We are used to treating this as an environmental statistic, a sad fact trotted out in a nature documentary to which we have little emotional connection. Seen this way, we miss a vital truth: food, agriculture, construction, and forestry all depend immensely on natural systems. Pollination, water filtration, soil fertility, and flood control are among the functions that biodiversity provides for us. When that infrastructure fails, the economy built on top of it becomes more expensive, then less reliable, and eventually, in some places, unworkable. Emergency Room Most of what passes for environmental action today is triage. A river floods a city that paved over its wetlands, and engineers are called in to build higher walls. A heat wave kills crops, and governments subsidize irrigation for farmland that used to be forest. A fishery collapses, and the response is a moratorium, arriving years after the fish are already gone. This is the pattern across almost every domain of environmental policy: we manage consequences with enormous expense, and we manage causes almost as an afterthought. It is also the least efficient way to run a planet. Treating a symptom after it has metastasized costs orders of magnitude more than preventing it, financially as much as ecologically. Some of this triage is now unavoidable. The carbon already in the atmosphere will continue influencing the climate for years regardless of what we do next, while a great deal of the damage caused by air pollution is already locked in and can only be managed, not undone. These are debts we are stuck repaying. Biodiversity is often different because it is still substantially in our hands. A species pushed to the edge can, with sustained effort, be pulled back from it. A degraded watershed can, over a generation, recover its function. In Kazakhstan, recent estimates place the snow leopard population at between 152 and 189 animals, close to levels last recorded in the 1980s. The recovery has been associated with sustained monitoring and habitat protection. It demonstrates that when species and ecosystems are effectively managed and adequately protected, conservation measures can deliver tangible results by maintaining biodiversity and helping threatened species recover. That kind of recovery is rare in climate policy. This disconnect risks creating dangerous trade-offs. We cannot decarbonize an economy while continuing to bulldoze the ecosystems around it. An electric vehicle removes tailpipe emissions from a city street, and that is real progress. But it also requires critical minerals such as lithium, copper, nickel, and cobalt, whose extraction can carry substantial environmental costs. None of this is a criticism of electric vehicles. It is a reminder...

Central Asia Water Cooperation

Water in Central Asia: Can the Five States Reach an Agreement?

Central Asia is entering a period of growing water stress, as climate change makes supplies less predictable while demand continues to rise. Populations are growing, economies require new energy and industrial capacity, glaciers are shrinking, and agriculture continues to consume most of the available water. The region’s two main rivers – the Amu Darya and Syr Darya – cross national borders, making it impossible for any one country to solve the problem on its own. After decades of disputes, Central Asian states are increasingly trying to manage water jointly. In 2026, that cooperation has produced further practical steps, from plans for automated water accounting in the Syr Darya basin to new proposals for reforming regional mechanisms. The question now is whether the five countries can agree on rules when their water needs remain different. Water and Energy: An Old Conflict The structural conflict is rooted in the region’s geography. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are upstream states and use water in part for hydropower generation, particularly in winter. Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan are downstream and need large volumes in summer during the irrigation season. During the Soviet period, a centralized exchange system was in place: upstream republics stored water in winter and released it in summer, receiving energy resources in return. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, that unified mechanism disappeared. Interstate agreements preserved a degree of coordination but did not eliminate the tension between upstream energy needs and downstream agricultural interests. Climate change is now adding another layer to the problem. Retreating glaciers in the Pamir and Tien Shan mountains are altering the timing and reliability of river flows, while populations and consumption are increasing. Countries across the region are planning new power plants, industrial facilities, mining projects, and data centers, while agriculture remains the largest consumer of water. From Seasonal Quotas to Joint Management The main formal mechanism for coordinating river allocations remains the Interstate Commission for Water Coordination of Central Asia (ICWC), established in 1992. Through it, countries coordinate water withdrawal limits and reservoir operating regimes in the Amu Darya and Syr Darya basins. In late 2025, the countries agreed on water allocations for 2026: for the Amu Darya, the total withdrawal limit for the water-management year from October 2025 to October 2026 was around 55.4 billion cubic meters, while the Syr Darya allocation for the non-growing season was approximately 4.2 billion cubic meters. The five-state framework does not, however, cover every major user of the Amu Darya. Afghanistan is outside the regional allocation system, while its Qosh Tepa Canal, now under construction, has added another source of uncertainty over future downstream flows. Such agreements keep the shared system functioning, but many decisions are still made ahead of each new season. Climate change and rising demand require a longer-term model. In February of this year, Kazakhstan proposed developing a Central Asian Framework Convention on Water Use, while joint infrastructure projects, including Kyrgyzstan’s Kambarata-1 hydropower plant with the participation of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, are gradually adding shared economic interests...

Tokayev Calls for Nuclear Talks 35 Years After Semipalatinsk Closure

President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has called for negotiations among nuclear powers and urged faster action to bring the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, designed to prohibit all nuclear test explosions, into force as Kazakhstan marked the 35th anniversary of the closure of the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site on August 29. The date also marks the International Day against Nuclear Tests, established by the UN General Assembly at Kazakhstan’s initiative in 2009. “Our country’s position as one of the leaders of the global anti-nuclear movement remains unchanged. We call for negotiations among nuclear powers, the earliest possible entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, and decisive multilateral action to eliminate the threat of nuclear weapons use,” Tokayev said. He said Kazakhstan’s decision to relinquish the world’s fourth-largest inherited nuclear arsenal reflected a choice in favor of peace, security, and sustainable development. Tokayev also said nuclear energy should be used exclusively for peaceful purposes, linking the country’s referendum-backed development of nuclear power to its long-term economic, scientific, and technological development. A Call After New START’s Expiry New START, the last U.S.-Russian strategic nuclear arms treaty, expired on February 5, 2026. On-site inspections, paused by mutual agreement in March 2020 because of the pandemic, never resumed. Russia blocked inspections in 2022 and halted treaty-required data exchanges after suspending implementation in 2023. The treaty’s expiry removed the last legally binding bilateral limits on deployed U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear forces, with no successor agreement in place. The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty has still not entered into force nearly three decades after opening for signature. It has been signed by 188 states and ratified by 179. Ratification by nine of the 44 states whose ratification is required for the treaty to enter into force is still needed. China, Egypt, Iran, Israel, and the United States have signed but not ratified. India, North Korea, and Pakistan have not signed, while Russia revoked its ratification in 2023. Speaking at a Stimson Center event in Washington on August 26, co-hosted by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change and attended by The Times of Central Asia, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi made a broader case for renewed engagement. “This is an era for diplomacy,” Grossi said, arguing that growing international fragmentation has made diplomacy more necessary. Tokayev also brings direct experience to the issue. Before becoming president, he served as a UN under-secretary-general and director-general of the UN Office at Geneva, the UN secretary-general’s personal representative to the Conference on Disarmament, and secretary-general of the Conference on Disarmament. Disarmament in Practice The Soviet Union conducted 456 nuclear tests at Semipalatinsk between 1949 and 1989, causing lasting damage to human health and the environment in surrounding regions. After independence, Kazakhstan transferred the nuclear warheads on its territory to Russia, joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear-weapon state, and worked with the United States to dismantle associated infrastructure under the Cooperative Threat Reduction program. Much of that cooperation took place through the program commonly known as Nunn–Lugar....