Climate change in central Asia threatens Russia from the south, experts say

Paul Goble Georgian Daily (from the first Georgia, not the one in the US): Russians have been focusing on the impact of global warming on their northern regions, worried that it will turn the northern third of their country into an impassable bog but hopeful that it will leave the adjoining Arctic Ocean sufficient free of ice to allow for economic development and shipping.

Earlier this year, Oxfam released a report, entitled “Reaching Tipping Point? Climate Change and Poverty in Tajikistan,” based on interviews with people in that Central Asian country and its neighbors whose lives are being transformed by rising temperatures (www.oxfam.org.uk/resources/policy/climate_change/climate-change-poverty-tajikistan.html).

That report, because it posits that deteriorating climatic conditions in the region will both create economic and security problems in the region and lead ever more Central Asians to seek work in the Russian Federation, is attracting the attention of Moscow analysts who are clearly disturbed by these implications.

In an article posted on Stoletie.ru at the end of last week, Aleksandr Shustov argues that the Oxfam report because of its implications has “attracted attention to the crisis social-ecological situation which is emerging in many countries on the southern borders of Russia” (www.stoletie.ru/geopolitika/klimat_i_migracija_2010-03-05.htm).

The Oxfam interviews, Shustov says, show that people in Central Asia are already very much affected by “objective meteorological changes,” most importantly, “the rising air temperature,” which is leading to ever more frequent droughts, the melting of glaciers, and less water available for agriculture, industry and even human consumption.

…But even before these countries face disaster, they are already having to confront declining agricultural production as a result of water shortages and even the stopping often for long periods of time of many industries because not enough electric power is now being generated by the hydro-electric dams there….

A bridge to a mine in Tajikistan, shot by Brian Harrington Spier, Wikimedia Commons, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license