Kyrgyzstan revives pre-Soviet traditions for climate adaptation

Sophie Yeo in Responding to Climate Change: In early April, the villagers of Samarkandek, Kyrgyzstan, react with a curious enthusiasm to the sight of apricots coming into bloom. As soon as the flowers emerge, old and young gather for the Festival of Blooming Apricots to recite poetry, sing and dance in celebration of the oncoming harvest. ...

The festival began four years ago, inaugurated by Akylbek Kasymov, founder of environmental charity Foundation Bio Muras in Kyrgyzstan. It is more than an attempt at cultural revival. Kasymov hoped that, by bringing together elders with younger generations, they would be able to pass on their old traditions, once practised by pastoral communities, but now fading fast.

The Kyrgyz people have started to realise that such skills, now all but vanished from their collective memory, could prove vital in helping them deal with the changes that climate change is set to impose on their landscape and their way of life.

...Indigenous knowledge spans an array of themes, which evolved to make nomadic life in Kyrgyzstan’s mountainous landscape more comfortable, including skills such as building and decorating a yurt, raising cattle on natural fodder, and traditional recipes such as kuurma tea. But on top of that, it also includes knowledge on how to live sustainably and deal with the vagaries of the earth and weather: skills such as grafting, planting and caring for livestock....

The Alai Mountains in Kyrgyzstan, shot by Nihongarden , Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons 3.0 license

Border guard wounded in shootout over water access on Kyrgyz-Tajik border

Space Daily via AFP: A Kyrgyz border guard received head injuries on Thursday following clashes near a disputed border between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan that Bishkek blamed on Tajiks attempting to divert water from a river.

Kyrgyzstan's border service said in a statement that its guards came across several Tajiks building an unauthorised water pipeline in the latest incident in the tense Fergana valley region, which is uneasily shared by the Central Asian countries amid increasing water shortages.

Bishkek said about 30 Tajik citizens began throwing stones at Kyrgyz border guards, who demanded they stop diverting the water and shot into the air.

Tajik border guards then arrived and opened fire on the Tamdyk Kyrgyz border post, including with mortar shells, Bishkek said.

The Fergana valley area, densely populated and straddling the territories of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, has seen clashes since becoming independent from Soviet rule in the early 1990s, as precise borders were never agreed....

India and China farmers back new climate adaptation alliance

Sophie Yeo in Responding to Climate Change:  A network of 25 indigenous communities from 10 countries has come together to share traditional knowledge on how to adapt to climate change. Countries in the network include China, Peru, Bhutan, Kyrgyzstan, India, Tajikistan and Papua New Guinea.

Seed sharing between the groups will ensure that farmers grow crops that are resilient and diverse enough to withstand major damage in the face of unusual weather. “We are from different communities but we have similar problems relating to climate change,” said Akylbek Kasymov, an economist at Kyrgyz National Agrarian University, and leader of the Kyrgyz delegation at a workshop for indigenous people in Bhutan.

The International Network of Mountain Indigenous People was created by communities from mountainous regions, speaking 22 languages between them, to swap ideas, information, and even seeds, so they can be resilient in the face of a changing climate.

These mountainous regions will face similar problems as the impacts of climate change become more severe, threatening the livelihoods and traditions of their indigenous communities. These problems include melting glaciers, changes in rainfall patters, failing crops and more pests and diseases.

For instance, in Papua New Guinea, agriculture is the largest economic activity, and its natural climate means that most of its crops are fed by the rain. At a recent meeting in Bhutan, Papuan farmers highlighted how changing rainfall patterns mean that the islanders have a growing need for irrigation to keep their crops alive. Local knowledge of this system is lacking. Through the network, indigenous communities will be able to help each other by sharing this kind of information....

Tajik craft customs, from an 1860 Russian image

NASA data find some hope for water in Aral Sea basin

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory: A new study using data from NASA satellite missions finds that, although the long-term water picture for the Aral Sea watershed in Central Asia remains bleak, short-term prospects are better than previously thought.

Once the fourth largest inland sea in the world, the Aral Sea has lost 90 percent of its water volume over the last 50 years. Its watershed -- the enormous closed basin around the sea -- encompasses Uzbekistan and parts of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.

Graduate student Kirk Zmijewski and assistant professor Richard Becker of the University of Toledo, Ohio, wanted to find out whether all of the water was gone for good, or whether some of it might have ended up elsewhere in the watershed, behind dams or in aquifers. They also wanted to gauge whether decreasing rainfall has contributed to the catastrophic water loss.

The researchers used data from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites to map monthly changes in mass within the watershed from 2003 to 2012. These changes are associated with changes in water volume, both on and below the land surface. They mapped the entire Aral Sea watershed, which is more than twice the size of Texas at 580,000 square miles (1.5 million square kilometers).

Zmijewski and Becker found that each year throughout the decade, the watershed lost an average of 2.9 to 3.4 cubic miles (12 to 14 cubic kilometers) of water, or the equivalent of one Lake Mead per year. That's a sobering rate of loss, but it's only about half as much as the rate at which the Aral Sea itself is losing water (5.8 cubic miles or 24 cubic kilometers). "That means that roughly half the water lost from the Aral Sea has entirely left the watershed, by evaporation or agricultural uses, but half is upstream within the watershed," said Becker.

Specifically, more water is now in the central part of the watershed, where almost all of the region's farming takes place. That area increased in mass during the last four years of the study. The researchers believe that some of the increase comes from improvements in water conservation practices, though some was simply the result of inefficient irrigation, for example, water seeping out of unlined ditches into aquifers....

A stranded ship in the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan, shot by Staecker, public domain 

Researchers analyze melting glaciers and water resources in Central Asia

PhysOrg: As part of the ACQWA European project, coordinated by the Institute of Environmental Sciences at the University of Geneva (UNIGE), researchers from UNIGE collaborated with scientists from the German-speaking part of Switzerland, Germany, and Russia to highlight the recent climate changes and glaciation in the Tien Shan Mountains (Central Asia), and explain their consequences.

After the fall of the Soviet Union twenty years ago, water distribution in Central Asia became a source of conflict. In areas where summer precipitation is low, glaciers play an important role when considering the quantity of available water. The Tien Shan region is a prime example; mountain glaciers in this region contribute significantly to the fresh water supply in the arid zones of Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Northwestern China.

Like Switzerland, Kyrgyzstan serves as a water tower for its neighboring countries. While the impact of climate change on glaciation and water flow in the Tien Shan Mountains has already been the subject of studies, a consistent and local perspective of collected data has never before been presented. The results of this research, led by the l'UNIGE, show that the retreat of glaciers is more pronounced in peripheral areas, where summers are dry and melting ice and snow are key sources of water.

Glaciers are losing their surface every year The glaciers in the Tien Shan Mountains cover a surface of over 15,000 square kilometers, equivalent to one third of the surface area of Switzerland. In recent decades, these glaciers have lost between 0.1% and 0.8% of their surface per year; a decrease comparable to that of alpine glaciers. The largest retreat was observed on the periphery of the Tien Shan Mountains, near the major cities of Almaty, Bishkek, Tashkent and Ürümqi. "In the summer, glaciers are the only source of fresh water for irrigation and household consumption in these regions," said Annina Sorg, first author of the study and researcher at the ISE (UNIGE) and at the Institute of Geology of Bern University. "The intensification of glacial melting strongly affects the quantity and seasonal distribution of water. Initially, the retreat of glaciers is going to increase the available water resources, but if precipitation doesn't compensate for the losses related to glacial retreat, the reduction of glacier volume will eventually reduce the amount of available water."...

A glacier in the Tien Shan mountain range, shot by Andrzej Barabasz (Chepry), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Fast melting glaciers threaten Kyrgyz biodiversity

Pavol Stracansky in IPS/IFEJ: Kyrgyzstan's glaciers are receding at what scientists say is an alarming rate, fuelled by global warming. And while experts warn of a subsequent catastrophe for energy and water security for Kyrgyzstan and neighbour states downstream reliant on its water flows, devastation to local ecosystems and the effects on plant and wildlife could be just as severe.

"Animals and vegetation will not be unaffected and the risks for some species will be great," Ilia Domashov, deputy head of the BIOM Environmental NGO in Bishkek told IPS. More than four percent - 8,400 square kilometres - of Kyrgyzstan's territory consists of glaciers.

A natural process of water release from summer melting of the glaciers, which freeze again during the winter, feeds many of the country's rivers and lakes. Up to 90 percent of water in Kyrgyzstan rivers comes from glaciers, local experts claim. This flow of water is not just important to energy needs and farming, it also feeds interconnected ecosystems providing habitats for some of the world's most diverse flora and fauna. Kyrgyzstan's biodiversity is among the greatest in the region and stretches through a variety of climatic habitats, ranging from glaciers to subtropical and temperate ecosystems.

…In Kyrgyzstan's submission to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, published last year, it was predicted that the country's glaciated area would recede by up to 95 percent over the next century…

Glacier in Tian Shan mountain range, shot by Andrzej Barabasz (Chepry), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license