More than a decade after the documentary True Appaloosa brought attention to Kyrgyzstan’s spotted horses, breeder Munarbek Kuldanbaev is trying to turn a handful of surviving animals into a viable population. He speaks to Novastan about genetics, Soviet-era crossbreeding, the Chaar’s place in Kyrgyz heritage and the long road towards official recognition.

When True Appaloosa (available in Europe on Prime Video) was filmed more than a decade ago, the question at its centre was whether Kyrgyzstan’s spotted horses might be related to the American Appaloosa.

For Munarbek Kuldanbaev, founder of the Chaar Appaloosa Foundation and a breeder of Chaar horses, that question eventually became the beginning of a much larger project.

Kuldanbaev now insists on an important distinction. Whatever ancient connections may exist between spotted horse populations, the American Appaloosa and the Kyrgyz Chaar should not be treated as the same breed. They developed in different environments and cultural traditions, he argues, and the Chaar should be understood on its own terms as an indigenous Kyrgyz horse.

The breeding programme began with the stallion Chaar Suluu and five mares. Today, according to Kuldanbaev, it numbers more than 80 horses, while other breeders in Kyrgyzstan have also begun developing Chaar lines of their own.

The challenge, however, is not simply to produce more spotted horses. Kuldanbaev says decades of crossbreeding have altered indigenous Kyrgyz horse populations, particularly during the twentieth century. His project therefore combines genetic research, physical characteristics, historical references and traditional knowledge in an attempt to identify and restore what he describes as the Chaar’s “original type”.

That raises a more difficult question: when does conservation become reconstruction?

It is a question Kuldanbaev does not avoid. He acknowledges that no living population remains unchanged over centuries and that restoring the Chaar inevitably contains an element of reconstruction. His argument is that such reconstruction must be guided by evidence rather than by aesthetic preference.

His longer-term ambition is formal recognition of the Chaar in Kyrgyzstan. The project is working towards a population of 500 horses with documented pedigrees, which Kuldanbaev says would provide the basis for an application for official breed recognition.

For him, the stakes go beyond horse breeding. Preserving the Chaar, he argues, also means preserving part of Kyrgyzstan’s nomadic history, cultural heritage and biodiversity.

Novastan English Editor-in-Chief Mathieu Lemoine spoke with Munarbek Kuldanbaev about how the project has evolved, what genetic research can – and cannot – tell us about the Chaar, and what role Kyrgyzstan should play in preserving indigenous breeds.

Novastan: True Appaloosa documented the early years of your search for the Chaar horse. More than a decade later, what has changed most since the film was made – both in your understanding of the Chaar and in the project itself?

Munarbek Kuldanbaev: As you can see in the film, True Appaloosa was not really about the Chaar horse. At that time, we were trying to answer a different question: whether the Kyrgyz spotted horse was related to the American Appaloosa.

The answer is that they do share some genetic similarities, but we have to be very careful about saying that the Kyrgyz spotted horse is a “true Appaloosa”.

Even if they may have some common roots, the Appaloosa and the Kyrgyz Chaar horse are different breeds, each with its own history shaped by the land where it developed, as well as by the culture and traditions of the people who bred and used these horses.

After the film was released, I began asking myself what should come next. I already had Chaar Suluu, I had learned about the extensive crossbreeding of indigenous Kyrgyz horses before, during and after the Soviet period, and I had a strong personal ambition to change the situation.

Years later, I can see what that decision has led to. The revival programme started with Chaar Suluu and five mares. Today, we have more than 80 Chaar horses. I see more and more local breeders becoming interested in breeding the Chaar and participating in its reintroduction.

For me, this is probably the biggest change since the film.

Back then, I was searching for answers. Today, I can see, touch and feel the result of that search. The work has become something bigger than my own story – it has become a living population of Chaar horses and a growing interest in preserving them.

The programme began with Chaar Suluu and five mares. What happened to Chaar Suluu after the documentary, and how important is his genetic line today?

Chaar Suluu remained at the heart of the project after the film.

During the filming of True Appaloosa, he was one of the horses from which we collected material for genetic research. The results showed that, among the horses we tested, he had one of the lowest levels of genetic influence from other breeds. That was one of the reasons I considered him so important for the revival programme.

He also carries the LP gene associated with leopard spotting. Around 90% of Chaar Suluu’s foals have been spotted, and he produces many of the coat colours and patterns traditionally associated with the Chaar and Appaloosa.

But Chaar Suluu could not do this alone.

When I began the programme, I also had another spotted stallion, Chaarat. Two of his sons, Ak-Suluu and Tan-Suluu, have become important breeding stallions and are now being bred to Chaar Suluu’s daughters.

The goal was never simply to reproduce one exceptional horse. It was to build a viable Chaar population and establish several breeding lines.

Chaar Suluu was the foundation, but the future of the Chaar has to be bigger than one stallion.

What historical evidence is there for the Chaar as a traditional Kyrgyz horse?

Unfortunately, there are very few written historical records from ancient Kyrgyzstan itself. But that does not mean there is no historical evidence.

A great deal of information about horses and nomadic peoples in this region was recorded by Chinese chroniclers.

Chinese historical records speak of the famous “heavenly horses” of Central Asia, sometimes described as horses that “sweated blood”, and of the nomadic peoples who bred them. There are also representations of spotted horses in ancient Chinese ceramics.

But perhaps the most important evidence survives in Kyrgyz culture and tradition.

Spotted horses have played a special role in ceremonies and traditional practices. They could serve as a protective symbol or talisman for a family or clan.

The Chaar also appears repeatedly in Kyrgyz oral tradition. In folk tales, legends and traditional stories, the Chaar is mentioned as a distinctive horse.

There is also an important reference in the epic Manas. The first horse of Manas is named Toru Chaar, which can be translated as “brown spotted”.

Read more on Novastan: Manas and the Making of Kyrgyzstan

None of these pieces of evidence on its own proves the complete genetic history of the modern Chaar. But taken together – chronicles, artistic representations, oral traditions, ceremonies and Manas – they suggest that spotted horses have deep roots in Kyrgyz and wider Central Asian horse culture.

How do you define a Chaar horse today? What distinguishes it from another spotted Kyrgyz horse or from an American Appaloosa?

Today, I define the Chaar as a distinct Kyrgyz breed with its own history, genetic foundation, physical characteristics and behaviour.

The spotted coat is one of its most recognisable characteristics, but spotting alone is not enough.

For me, the Chaar is a combination of coat pattern, origin, conformation, temperament, endurance and genetics.

Physically, it should be a strong, hardy and functional horse adapted to Kyrgyzstan. It should have good bone, strong legs and hooves, balanced conformation and the ability to travel long distances across difficult mountain and steppe terrain.

Read more on Novastan: Siblings on horseback

Temperament is equally important. It is an intelligent and independent horse that can work with people while retaining its natural independence.

It is not a decorative horse. It should be able to work and live in the conditions in which it developed.

This is also where I make a distinction between the Chaar and the American Appaloosa.

They share visible characteristics, especially their spotted coats, and there are genetic similarities. But they developed in different regions, environments and cultural traditions.

The Appaloosa developed in North America. The Chaar developed in Central Asia and is closely connected to the history of the Kyrgyz nomadic people.

That is why I do not call it a “Kyrgyz Appaloosa”. The Chaar has its own identity.

You describe your work as restoring the Chaar in its “original type”. How do you determine what that original type was, and where does preservation end and reconstruction begin?

Determining the original type of the Chaar is not simply a matter of choosing horses that look the way I think a Chaar should look.

We have tried to approach this scientifically, combining genetic research with physical observation, traditional knowledge, history and folklore.

Genetic studies helped us understand what remained of the population and how much it had been affected by crossbreeding.

We identified a group of horses with relatively low levels of influence from outside breeds and then examined their conformation, physical characteristics, temperament and behaviour.

At the same time, we compared those observations with descriptions of the Chaar in Kyrgyz history, folklore, legends and oral traditions.

For me, this is where preservation ends and reconstruction begins.

Read more on Novastan: Equestrian link

Preservation means protecting an existing population and maintaining its diversity and characteristics. But when a population has been heavily affected by crossbreeding and some of its original characteristics have been partially lost, simply preserving what exists today can also mean preserving the result of that change.

That is why I use the word “restoration”.

We are not trying to create a new breed according to our own preferences. We are trying to identify the characteristics that survived, understand them through genetics and historical evidence, and then use careful selection to bring those characteristics together again.

There is inevitably an element of reconstruction because no living population remains completely unchanged over centuries.

But that reconstruction has to be guided by evidence.

What has the genetic research told you about the ancestry and distinctiveness of the Chaar?

The genetic research helped us look at the history of the Chaar from a completely different perspective – through its DNA.

Researchers compared the Chaar with horse populations from different parts of the world.

The results place the Chaar among Central Asian horse populations, with particularly close relationships to Mongolian and Yakutian horses and links to other traditional populations in the region.

The population also retains significant genetic diversity, which is important for its future.

One of the most interesting findings concerns the spotted coat. Many of the Kyrgyz horses studied carried the Leopard Complex, the same genetic mechanism associated with spotting in breeds such as the Appaloosa.

When researchers compared the DNA region around this mutation with Leopard Complex horses from Europe and the United States, their results suggested that the mutation may have originated in Asia.

But this is not proven. More research, including horses from other parts of Asia, is needed.

That is important to emphasise.

Genetics does not give us a final story about the origin of the Chaar. It gives us evidence with which to test hypotheses.

Did that research confirm the ideas explored in True Appaloosa, or did it change what you believed?

In an important sense, it confirmed what we were exploring, but it also made the story more complicated.

The spotted horses of Kyrgyzstan and spotted horses in America share the same Leopard Complex mutation.

For me, that supports the possibility that, very far back in history, these horses belonged to a broader ancestral population.

But at some point their histories separated.

Horses in America were shaped by the American landscape, climate, history and the people who bred them. Horses that remained in Central Asia were shaped by its mountains, climate, nomadic cultures and breeders.

So today, I would not call the American Appaloosa and the Chaar the same breed. They are clearly different horses.

They may, however, carry a much older common genetic story.

The research has given us important pieces of the puzzle, but not the whole picture. Where exactly did the Leopard Complex mutation arise? How did those horse populations spread? At what point did they separate?

Every answer opens another question.

With a relatively small founding population, how do you avoid inbreeding?

From the beginning, that was one of the main risks I was thinking about.

We started with Chaar Suluu and five mares, but I also introduced a second stallion, Chaarat, which gave us another male line.

Chaarat became the sire of several important stallions, including Besh, Ak-Suluu and Tan-Suluu.

We are now carefully planning matings between the different lines to avoid breeding animals that are too closely related.

At the moment, we believe we can maintain genetic diversity within our own herd for approximately another five to seven years. After that, we will need to introduce new mares from outside our herd.

The encouraging development is that two other breeders in different regions of Kyrgyzstan have now begun their own Chaar breeding programmes.

In the future, we may therefore be able to exchange mares between breeding programmes and create a wider population rather than depending on one herd.

The goal is not simply to increase numbers. It is to build a genetically sustainable population.

How does the Chaar fit into Kyrgyzstan’s broader equestrian heritage?

The Chaar has always been part of the broader story of the Kyrgyz horse, but for a long time very few people outside a small circle knew that this type of horse still existed.

When True Appaloosa was shown on television, it was almost a discovery for the Kyrgyz public.

Many breeders became interested. That was positive, but it also created a danger.

Some began crossing spotted horses with other breeds in an effort to make them larger and heavier. For us, that risks changing the qualities that make the indigenous horse distinctive.

Our project is therefore not simply about increasing the number of Chaar horses.

It is about preserving the characteristics that developed through environment, history and traditional breeding.

An indigenous breed should not be frozen in the past, but neither should it be changed until the characteristics that made it distinctive disappear.

And the Chaar is much more than a horse.

By preserving it, we are also preserving part of Kyrgyz history and nomadic culture, as well as an element of the biodiversity of Central Asia.

Your long-term objective is official recognition of the Chaar as a breed. Where does that process stand?

At present, the Chaar is not officially recognised as a breed, either internationally or in Kyrgyzstan.

Formal recognition is an important next step because it would give the Chaar official status and create a stronger foundation for long-term conservation.

To submit an application in Kyrgyzstan, we are working towards a sufficiently large population of purebred horses with documented pedigrees.

The target we are using is 500 horses with reliable pedigree information.

We are therefore building the population, documenting the bloodlines and developing a breeding system that preserves what we consider the original type while maintaining genetic diversity.

Recognition should not simply be a certificate or a name in a registry.

Before seeking it, we need to demonstrate that there is a stable population, a documented pedigree structure and clear characteristics distinguishing the Chaar from other populations.

What support do you currently receive from the Kyrgyz authorities?

At the moment, we do not receive financial, veterinary, scientific or institutional support from the Kyrgyz government for the conservation of the Chaar.

I have approached government institutions several times, including on recognition and conservation.

My impression is that the system in this field has not yet fully moved away from approaches inherited from the Soviet period. There is still a strong reliance on established standards and procedures, and new research or approaches can be viewed cautiously.

For several years I tried to combine the Chaar breeding programme with my business. It became increasingly difficult.

We also faced serious losses from wolf attacks, including animals representing genetic material that had taken years of breeding to develop.

In 2021, I decided to devote myself completely to the Chaar project.

With friends in France, we then launched an accelerated breeding programme. In 2023, an international structure was established in France to support the conservation work and make private fundraising more transparent.

So far, conservation has been driven primarily by private initiative and international cooperation rather than government funding.

But we would welcome serious cooperation with Kyrgyz government agencies, veterinary institutions, universities and scientists.

More broadly, what should the state do to preserve indigenous horse breeds?

I believe the state’s role should be limited, but important.

The government does not need to manage the breeding itself.

What it should do is recognise indigenous breeds officially, protect their legal status, support scientific research and provide reasonable benefits or exemptions for breeders genuinely preserving them.

It should also support veterinary work and traditional pasture systems without trying to control individual breeding decisions.

The actual preservation and breeding should remain in the hands of breeders, researchers and local communities who understand the horses.

For me, the best model is simple: the state should recognise and protect; the people should preserve and develop.

Interview conducted by Novastan English Editor-in-Chief Mathieu Lemoine.

The post “The Chaar is much more than a horse”: reviving Kyrgyzstan’s indigenous spotted breed appeared first on Novastan English.

In rural Uzbekistan, access to irrigation water is formally guaranteed but often determined by informal power, money and social position. Field research in the Fergana Valley shows that women – especially those heading households alone – are pushed towards risky strategies that deepen their exposure to poverty, stigma and violence.

At two o’clock in the morning, when male farmers guarding the irrigation outlets have gone to rest, some women in rural Uzbekistan quietly open the gates and divert water towards their household plots. They describe the practice as “stealing” water. It may be the only opportunity they have to save their crops.

The risks are considerable. A woman discovered at the outlet can face confrontation or harassment. Merely being outside at night and speaking directly with male farmers can damage the reputation of a widow or divorced woman in her village. Yet without irrigation, household gardens fail, food supplies shrink and women lose one of their few reliable sources of income.

These accounts emerged from qualitative fieldwork conducted in September and October 2023 in Yazyavan district, in Uzbekistan’s densely populated Fergana region. Interviews and two focus-group discussions involved women managing farms or household plots, alongside experts working with rural communities and women in agriculture. The research examined why men and women obtain different access to irrigation water and how women negotiate both formal and informal channels.

Equal rights on paper, unequal access in practice

Uzbekistan’s legislation provides for equitable access to irrigation water by farms, dehkan farms and household producers. At community level, Water Users Associations and local water distributors, known as mirabs, play central roles in allocating water. In practice, however, access is shaped by land ownership, wealth, location, marital status and the ability to participate in male-dominated networks.

Women are a minority among registered farm owners, but they carry much of the responsibility for household plots and kitchen gardens. These plots are crucial to rural food security and household survival. Labour migration has also left more women responsible for agricultural work and irrigation, even though local norms continue to treat water negotiation as men’s work.

The fieldwork showed that women are not affected in the same way. A woman managing a larger commercial farm with a husband or male relative may receive scheduling information, pay Water Users Association fees or finance a well. Even then, she may be excluded from real decisions. Single women managing small household or dehkan plots have far fewer resources and almost no formal bargaining power. They are frequently the last users in the irrigation chain.

Water follows power

Irrigation schedules are often unreliable or inaccessible. Several women said they did not know when water would arrive. Those whose land lies far from a canal may receive only a weak flow after upstream farms have irrigated, or no water at all. In dry seasons, some respondents reported being unable to irrigate even once.

Money and informal influence further distort distribution. Interviewees and experts described bribery of mirabs as a common way to obtain water earlier or in greater quantities. Farmers with stronger financial and social networks can guard outlets, negotiate directly and pay additional costs. Poor women, particularly those heading households alone, cannot compete on the same terms.

The physical work of securing water is itself demanding. One interviewee described the distance, expense and constant vigilance involved:

“One has to travel 15 to 25 kilometres to open the gate in the channel, and while doing so, one needs to pay the mirabs. After that, one needs to follow the water flow to prevent other farmers from using it and engage in negotiations or conflicts if necessary. Furthermore, one needs to go upstream every two or three hours to make sure there is sufficient water and that nobody else is diverting it. This involves staying out at night and walking along deserted, dusty roads.”

For many women, this is not only physically exhausting but also dangerous and socially difficult, particularly when irrigation requires them to remain outside alone at night.

Formal participation offers little protection. Women who belonged to Water Users Associations said they attended meetings without being able to influence decisions. Important discussions may also take place informally in chaykhanas, social spaces generally reserved for men. The result is participation without meaningful voice: women may pay fees and fulfil obligations while remaining excluded from the networks that determine actual distribution.

Informal solutions create new dangers

When formal routes fail, women improvise. Some negotiate with male neighbours. Others wait for drainage water released from nearby farms, although it may be scarce or contaminated with agricultural chemicals. A private well can provide an alternative, but installation and pumping costs are beyond the reach of most smallholders and can be prohibitive even for larger farms.

For single women, clandestinely opening water outlets at night may be the only remaining option. Women described waiting for hours in darkness, wind and dust, then fleeing if farmers or workers appeared. This strategy exposes them not only to physical danger but also to gender-based stigma. Widowed and divorced women already face social marginalisation; being seen outdoors at night can intensify gossip and exclusion.

Competition over water can also become violent. Respondents reported that male farmers guard outlets and may use force when defending their turn. One expert recalled a case in which an older woman farmer was beaten during a dispute. Although water conflicts affect men as well, women face an additional layer of vulnerability because they have less physical, financial and institutional power with which to respond.

From failed harvests to deeper poverty

The consequences extend beyond a single irrigation season. Women who receive water only once or twice cannot maintain reliable harvests. Trees and gardens dry out, and farmers producing priority crops may be reprimanded by local authorities or risk losing their land because they have failed to meet production expectations.

For household farmers, crop failure immediately affects food security. Some women reduce the variety of crops they plant or abandon cultivation altogether. To compensate, they seek poorly paid informal work as mardikors, day labourers hired for agricultural or cleaning work. Some respondents said they brought their children with them.

One participant in the focus-group discussion described the conditions they faced:

“We plant, weed and cultivate other farmers’ land. We also go to the mardikor bazaar, the labour market for daily workers, with our children. After finishing work on one plot, we go to another the following day with nothing to eat but one loaf of bread and tea. We also go to the city to clean streets or wash windows, whatever the weather. It can feel as hot as 60 degrees outside.”

These accounts show how inadequate access to irrigation can push entire households towards precarious labour and may also increase children’s exposure to informal work. This creates a self-reinforcing cycle. Lack of water reduces yields and income. Lower income makes it harder to pay for pumps, wells, transport or informal payments. Women then become even less able to negotiate access during the next season. As water stress intensifies, this pattern is likely to become more severe.

Water policy must recognise gendered realities

Improving infrastructure and water efficiency is essential, but technical solutions alone will not resolve unequal access. A system can be formally neutral while still reproducing inequality when information, decision-making and informal influence remain concentrated among men.

Water schedules should be transparent, reliable and accessible to all users, including women managing household plots. Oversight of mirabs and local distribution should be strengthened, with clear complaint mechanisms and safeguards against corruption. Water Users Associations must move beyond nominal female attendance and give women a meaningful role in decisions over allocation, maintenance and fees.

Support should focus particularly on single women and female-headed households. This could include targeted access to water-saving technology, affordable financing, advisory services and practical community arrangements that remove the need to irrigate alone at night. Local women leaders and community activists can help represent users who are currently excluded from formal negotiations.

More broadly, agricultural and climate policies must recognise women as farmers and water managers, even when their work takes place on household plots and is absent from official production statistics. Their gardens are not marginal to Uzbekistan’s rural economy: they sustain families, provide income and strengthen food security. Improved access of female farmers to water will lead to increased food security in rural areas. According to UN Food and Agriculture Organization, subsistence farming is not only a source of income for rural households but also contributes to 80% of agricultural production in Uzbekistan.

Women in Yazyavan are already demonstrating considerable agency in adapting to scarcity. But resilience should not mean forcing them to navigate corruption, contamination, violence and shame simply to obtain a resource to which they are legally entitled. Equitable water governance requires not only more efficient irrigation, but institutions capable of seeing who reaches the canal gate – and who is compelled to wait until the middle of the night.

Author’s note: This article is based on qualitative research conducted in Yazyavan district, Fergana region, in September and October 2023. The study included 2 focus-group discussions with farmers and several expert interviews. It was originally developed as the policy brief “Negotiating access to water: the study of practices of female farmers in rural Uzbekistan”.

By Gulnoza Akhmedova.

The post When irrigation becomes a nightly struggle for Uzbekistan’s women farmers appeared first on Novastan English.

From Kazakhstan’s pine-covered lakes to Kyrgyzstan’s walnut groves and the tugai forests of the Amu Darya, Central Asia is considerably greener than its international image suggests. But fires, mass tourism and development are testing whether landscapes designated as protected are also protected in practice.

In the height of summer, a spark can be enough.

It may come from a campfire left smouldering beneath the trees, a cigarette discarded beside a road or machinery operating in dry grass. Heat, wind and vegetation do the rest. For the foresters and rangers responsible for Central Asia’s protected landscapes, the first sign may be a thread of smoke rising behind a mountain ridge. By the time a fire is visible from the nearest village, reaching it may already require hours on rough tracks with limited equipment.

Wildfires have made forests an urgent political issue far beyond Central Asia. Yet the region is rarely included in international conversations about them. To many outsiders, Central Asia remains a land of steppe, high mountains and desert: spectacular, certainly, but largely treeless.

The reality is more complicated.

Spruce forests climb the slopes of the Tian Shan. Walnut and wild-fruit trees cover parts of southern Kyrgyzstan. Pine and birch grow among the lakes and granite formations of northern Kazakhstan. Juniper woodlands survive in the mountains of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Along the Amu Darya and other rivers, fragments of tugai forest still provide shelter to deer, wild boar and migratory birds. Turkmenistan’s mountains and deserts contain pistachio woodland, juniper, tamarisk and saxaul adapted to some of the harshest conditions in Eurasia.

These landscapes store water, stabilise soil, support rural livelihoods and shelter wildlife. They are also being asked to perform another function: attract a rapidly growing number of visitors.

The result is a regional dilemma. Central Asian governments are creating and expanding protected areas, promoting ecotourism and announcing ambitious restoration targets. At the same time, their forests and parks face hotter conditions, fires, grazing, construction, waste and, in several countries, limited enforcement capacity.

Read more on Novastan: From the Pamirs to the Aral Sea: Following the Amu Darya Through Central Asia

The important question is therefore not only how many national parks Central Asia has. It is how effectively they are protected.

A region greener than its reputation

Central Asia’s forests are not the continuous temperate woodlands found elsewhere. Many are fragmented, highly localised and adapted to mountain, river or desert environments. Their relative scarcity makes them particularly valuable.

In eastern Kazakhstan, Katon-Karagay National Park reaches from forest and meadow to alpine tundra in the Altai Mountains. Siberian larch, fir, spruce, birch and cedar pine provide habitat for maral deer, brown bears, lynx, ibex and the elusive snow leopard. Kazakhstan describes Katon-Karagay as its largest national park and one of its most intact protected landscapes.

Read more on Novastan: How Central Asia is trying to protect the snow leopard

Farther west, the pine forests of Burabay and Bayanaul emerge almost unexpectedly from the surrounding steppe. Their lakes and accessible landscapes have made them popular tourist destinations, but accessibility brings pressure: more vehicles, more informal campsites, more rubbish and a greater likelihood that human activity will start a fire.

In Kyrgyzstan, the walnut-fruit forests around Arslanbob are among the region’s most distinctive human landscapes. Walnuts grow alongside wild apple, pear, plum and hawthorn. Local families have long depended on collecting nuts and fruit, meaning that conservation cannot be separated from questions of access, income and community rights. Forests cover only a small proportion of Kyrgyzstan’s territory, but they remain an important ecological and economic asset.

Higher in the Tian Shan, Schrenk spruce and juniper forests surround parks such as Ala-Archa, Chong-Kemin and Besh-Tash. Camera traps in Besh-Tash recorded snow leopards, argali, Siberian ibex, wolves and foxes in 2025, a reminder that protected areas contain living ecosystems rather than simply scenic backdrops for visitors.

Read more on Novastan: Artists and activists raise awareness for Bishkek’s waste problem

Uzbekistan’s mountain parks protect juniper woodland, wild-fruit species and habitats used by bears, ibex, lynx, vultures and other birds of prey. In the west, the newly created Aralkum National Nature Park represents a very different experiment: protecting life emerging in and around the former bed of the Aral Sea. Uzbek authorities report that the park contains 25 animal species, including four listed in the national Red Book.

Tajikistan’s forests cover only a small part of the country, but their ecological function is disproportionate to their area. Juniper, pistachio, almond and riverine vegetation help hold mountain soils together and regulate water. Our media partner Asia-Plus has reported that forest cover is now approximately three percent of Tajikistan’s territory and that the country’s once-extensive tugai forests have contracted dramatically under agricultural pressure.

Turkmenistan relies less on the designation “national park” than its neighbours. Its conservation system is organised largely around state reserves, including Badkhyz, Köýtendag, Repetek, Kaplankyr and Syunt-Hasardag. These protect ecosystems ranging from pistachio woodland and mountain habitat to saxaul desert, along with species such as kulan, goitered gazelle, urial and markhor.

Together, these landscapes dismantle the idea of Central Asia as an ecologically uniform expanse of empty land.

How many parks does Central Asia have?

The simple answer is that no simple regional figure is entirely reliable.

Kazakhstan consistently identifies 14 state national nature parks. In Kyrgyzstan, however, published totals vary according to whether sources count only parks administered by the principal protected-areas department or include additional sites under different arrangements. Uzbekistan distinguishes between national parks, national natural parks, natural parks and other protected categories. Tajikistan uses several park and reserve classifications, while Turkmenistan’s system centres on state nature reserves and sanctuaries.

A regional total can therefore be misleading unless the legal categories are harmonised.

This is more than a technical problem. It demonstrates how governments can report growth in protected territory without necessarily making clear what each designation permits. A strict reserve may substantially limit human activity, while a national or nature park can contain zones for tourism, roads, grazing or other forms of use.

All five countries have framework legislation governing specially protected natural territories. Kazakhstan’s principal law dates from 2006, Kyrgyzstan’s current framework from 2011, Uzbekistan’s from 2004, Tajikistan’s from 2011 and Turkmenistan’s from 2012. But these laws operate alongside forest codes, land legislation, fire regulations and individual decisions establishing or rezoning particular parks.

The legal designation is therefore only the beginning. The practical questions are more revealing: Can a hotel be built inside the park? Can livestock graze there? How many rangers patrol it? Who responds when it burns? Can its boundaries be altered to accommodate development?

When ecotourism becomes mass tourism

Kazakhstan illustrates the contradiction particularly clearly.

Its national parks have become central to the country’s domestic-tourism strategy. New roads, visitor centres, accommodation and marked routes can make nature more accessible and generate income for remote regions. But growing visitor numbers also produce waste, soil erosion, traffic and fire risk.

Research and regional reporting have already raised concerns about damage to vegetation and soils along heavily used routes. Kazakhstan is now developing a new biodiversity framework for 2026-2035, under which the total area of specially protected natural territories is expected to increase from approximately 31 million to 33.2 million hectares.

The expansion is significant. Yet adding hectares does not by itself solve overcrowding in the most accessible parks or guarantee that tourism revenue is reinvested in conservation.

Kyrgyzstan faces a similar tension. More than 250,000 people visited the country’s protected zones in 2025, generating 38 million soms in revenue. Environmental specialists interviewed by 24.kg warned that roads and hotels were increasingly reaching previously undisturbed forests.

This raises an uncomfortable question: when a protected landscape becomes economically valuable as a destination, which institution is strong enough to say that no further construction should be allowed?

Tourism is not inherently hostile to conservation. Visitor fees can fund rangers, waste collection, trail maintenance and ecological monitoring. Guides and guesthouses can give local communities an economic reason to preserve wildlife and forests.

But this requires rules based on ecological carrying capacity rather than the assumption that every increase in visitor numbers represents success.

A park can receive more tourists and earn more money while becoming less capable of fulfilling the ecological purpose for which it was established.

New parks, old capacity problems

Uzbekistan is moving rapidly in the opposite direction: rather than confronting only the overcrowding of established destinations, it is significantly enlarging its protected-area system.

On 25 March 2026, the government created the Ovjazsoy-Moviy Toglar, Pskem and Fergana national natural parks, covering a combined 188,800 hectares. It also expanded Pop National Natural Park from 10,000 to 135,300 hectares.

The expansion follows earlier decisions enlarging the Nurata and Surkhan reserves and Zarafshan National Natural Park.

These measures could protect important mountain, forest and riverine habitats before roads, settlement or intensive tourism fragment them further. Uzbekistan is also working with UNDP and the Global Environment Facility on landscape restoration in the Western Tian Shan, Nuratau and Kugitang. The programme aims to improve the management of 1.3 million hectares of forests and rangelands.

Yet rapid territorial expansion produces its own challenge. New parks require trained staff, vehicles, fire equipment, ecological inventories, zoning plans, community consultations and reliable budgets. Without them, a park may exist immediately in law but only gradually on the ground.

The distinction between planting trees and restoring ecosystems is equally important. A plantation can increase an official forest indicator while providing less biodiversity than naturally regenerating native woodland. Saxaul planted to stabilise exposed soil has a different purpose from restoring juniper forest, walnut groves or riverine tugai.

The central question is not whether tree planting is valuable. It is what kind of landscape is being created, for whom and for how long.

Fire as the test of protection

Wildfire is perhaps the clearest test of whether a protected area functions beyond paper.

In Tajikistan, more than 430 hectares of forest were reportedly affected by fires across nine regions in 2025. Extreme heat and human carelessness were identified among the causes.

For a heavily forested country, that area might appear limited. In Tajikistan, where woodland is scarce and often protects vulnerable mountain soil, every burned hectare can have wider consequences. The loss of vegetation can accelerate erosion, damage pasture, reduce water retention and expose nearby settlements to landslides and flooding.

Across the region, remoteness complicates fire response. Protected forests may be separated from the nearest equipment by poor roads or mountain terrain. Rangers are expected to monitor tourists, prevent poaching, manage relations with local communities and respond to fire, often across vast areas.

Technology can improve early detection through cameras, satellite monitoring, drones and automated alerts. But an alert only helps when someone has the equipment, personnel and access needed to act on it.

Climate change further narrows the margin for error. Central Asia is already experiencing land degradation, water scarcity and stress on mountain and desert ecosystems. A hotter, drier landscape turns ordinary negligence into a potentially devastating event.

Who is supporting conservation?

Central Asian states are not dealing with these pressures alone.

The World Bank’s RESILAND initiative supports landscape restoration and climate resilience across the region. It also promotes transboundary protected areas and ecological corridors, recognising that watersheds and wildlife do not stop at political borders.

In Tajikistan, a World Bank investment of $45 million supports landscape restoration, sustainable natural-resource management and climate resilience. In Uzbekistan, the Bank has backed a much larger programme for forest and degraded-land restoration. Regional and national projects are also financed through the Global Environment Facility and implemented by UNDP, FAO and government agencies.

IUCN works with members and state partners in all five Central Asian countries, focusing on biodiversity, protected areas and conservation policy. UNESCO supports natural World Heritage sites and biosphere reserves, while the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund has channelled support towards civil-society organisations in the Mountains of Central Asia biodiversity hotspot.

In April 2026, the five Central Asian countries signed a regional declaration on biodiversity conservation in Astana. The declaration is politically important, but its value will ultimately be judged in less ceremonial settings: a ranger station with working equipment, a forest where illegal cutting has stopped, a tourism project relocated away from a fragile habitat, or a village given a meaningful role in managing nearby land.

International projects can provide money, expertise and technology. Their lasting contribution depends on whether they build institutions that continue functioning after a project cycle ends.

Protection with people, not against them

Forests are rarely empty spaces.

People collect walnuts and fruit, graze livestock, gather medicinal plants, work as guides and heat their homes with wood. Restricting access without creating alternatives can turn conservation into a source of conflict. Allowing unrestricted extraction, on the other hand, can gradually destroy the ecosystem on which those livelihoods depend.

This is why the human future of Central Asia’s protected areas matters as much as their legal status.

A family collecting walnuts in southern Kyrgyzstan, a guide leading visitors through the Tian Shan and a ranger watching for smoke may have different immediate interests. But all depend on the forest surviving.

Effective conservation requires communities to receive tangible benefits, participate in decisions and understand why some uses must be restricted. It also requires governments to resist projects that promise quick tourism revenue at the expense of long-term ecological stability.

Central Asia is creating more parks, restoring land and placing biodiversity higher on its regional agenda. Those are real developments. But the coming years will show whether the region is building resilient ecosystems or accumulating protected-area designations.

When smoke rises above a forest, the distinction becomes impossible to ignore.

A boundary drawn on a map cannot stop a fire. A law cannot patrol a mountain trail. A declaration cannot remove rubbish, prevent illegal cutting or persuade a developer to build elsewhere.

For that, a protected area needs people, resources and the political authority to remain protected.

By Mathieu Lemoine, Editor-in-Chief of Novastan English.

The post Central Asia’s Forests Under Pressure appeared first on Novastan English.

Thousands of kilometres before rusting fishing boats appear in the sands of Muynak, the Amu Darya begins as mountain water.

Its headwaters descend from the Pamirs and northern Hindu Kush through the Panj and Vakhsh river systems. The Panj marks much of the Afghan-Tajik border before meeting the Vakhsh; downstream of their confluence, the river takes the name Amu Darya.

From there, it leaves the mountains and enters an entirely different world of deserts, irrigated plains, ancient cities and modern international frontiers.

For centuries, the Amu Darya – the Oxus of antiquity – has helped determine where people could settle and where political power could flourish. Irrigation drawn from its waters sustained some of Central Asia’s great civilizations. Changes in its channels could nourish one settlement while depriving another of water. In the twentieth century, Soviet planners attempted to engineer the river on a vastly greater scale.

Read more on Novastan: The Caspian Sea Is Retreating. Central Asia Is Not Ready

Following it today from the mountains towards the Aral Sea means travelling through many of the defining questions facing contemporary Central Asia: hydropower and climate resilience, Afghanistan’s growing use of the river, cross-border trade, irrigation, agricultural dependence and the ecological legacy of the Aral disaster.

The river changes character repeatedly along the way.

In the mountains it is born. Along the Panj it becomes a frontier. On the Vakhsh it becomes electricity. At Termez it both divides and connects Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. In Khorezm it becomes the hidden infrastructure of civilization.

And near Muynak, its story ends in a landscape transformed by water that stopped arriving.

Before the Amu Darya: mountain water

There is no single spectacular spring at which the Amu Darya suddenly begins.

Its origins are dispersed across an immense mountain system. The Panj drains highland areas of Afghanistan and Tajikistan and forms a large part of their border. The Vakhsh descends through Tajikistan before joining it. From their confluence, the combined river flows westward as the Amu Darya.

The landscape is almost the inverse of what waits downstream.

Steep valleys, snow and glaciated mountains ultimately feed a river that will later cross some of the driest inhabited territory in Eurasia. Water falling or freezing high in the mountains will eventually irrigate fields hundreds of kilometres away.

That physical connection is one reason climate and water management upstream matter so much farther downstream. The Aral basin itself ultimately depends heavily on river systems fed by mountain snow and glacial melt.

The Vakhsh: turning water into electricity

Before joining the Panj, the Vakhsh has acquired another role: energy.

Tajikistan has built much of its electricity system around hydropower, and the enormous Rogun project now under construction on the Vakhsh sits at the centre of that strategy.

In June 2026, the World Bank approved a further $300 million in financing for Rogun. Once fully operational, the plant is expected to generate around 14,400 gigawatt-hours of electricity annually – equivalent to roughly 60 percent of Tajikistan’s current electricity generation – while also allowing greater electricity exports to neighbouring countries.

This illustrates one of the recurring complexities of Central Asian water politics.

For Tajikistan, mountain rivers represent energy security, winter electricity and potential exports. Downstream, the same waters sustain irrigated agriculture.

These interests are not necessarily incompatible. Reservoirs can regulate flows as well as store water. But they mean that water cannot be understood simply in terms of quantity.

When it is stored and when it is released matter too.

Already, before the name Amu Darya even appears on the map, the river has become economic infrastructure.

Then the mountains recede.

Termez: Afghanistan across the water

At Termez, the geopolitics of the Amu Darya become tangible.

The river marks the boundary between Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. Beyond the Uzbek bank lies Balkh Province, while near the Friendship Bridge the Afghan border town of Hairatan forms one of Afghanistan’s principal gateways to Central Asia.

Here, Afghanistan is not an abstract subject of regional diplomacy.

It is physically across the water.

The Friendship Bridge carries road and railway connections across the Amu Darya. For decades it has accumulated political symbolism – Soviet troops crossed it during the withdrawal from Afghanistan – but today Uzbekistan increasingly wants Termez to represent something different: commerce, logistics and connectivity.

That shift is visible a short distance away at Airitom.

The Airitom Free Zone began operating in August 2024 near the Afghan border. It was explicitly created to promote international and cross-border trade and includes retail, logistics, hotel, medical and other facilities. Afghan citizens can enter the zone without an Uzbek visa for stays of up to 15 days.

The geography is striking: the zone sits beside the Amu Darya itself.

The same river that functions as a state boundary is therefore increasingly being treated as the edge of an economic corridor between Central and South Asia.

Afghanistan returns to the river

Trade is not the only way Afghanistan is reshaping the politics of the Amu Darya.

For most of the Soviet period, water allocation downstream was managed within a single political system. Afghanistan was never fully integrated into the institutional arrangements inherited by the Central Asian republics after 1991.

That asymmetry is now becoming much harder to ignore.

Afghanistan is constructing the 285-kilometre Qosh Tepa Canal across the country’s northern provinces, with the stated objective of bringing Amu Darya water to drought-prone agricultural areas.

From Afghanistan’s perspective, the argument is straightforward: the country has substantial agricultural needs and an interest in using a river flowing along its northern frontier after decades during which its ability to exploit those waters remained comparatively limited.

From downstream Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, the same project looks different.

Every substantial withdrawal upstream potentially reduces what continues towards their irrigated regions. The project has therefore become one of the most consequential new questions in Central Asian water politics.

Yet portraying Qosh Tepa simply as an approaching “water war” would be misleading. The issue is better understood as the emergence of another major water user on an already intensely exploited river.

It reinforces the central fact of the Amu Darya basin:

Everyone has reasons to use more water.

Nobody can manufacture another river.

Turkmenabat: engineering the desert

Farther west, the Amu Darya enters Turkmenistan and passes Turkmenabat.

Here the relationship between water and human settlement becomes even more engineered.

Near the city, Amu Darya water enters the enormous Karakum Canal system, which carries it westwards through Turkmenistan.

The project embodied one of the defining ambitions of Soviet hydraulic planning: rather than accept the constraints imposed by aridity, engineers would move water across the desert.

And physically, they succeeded.

Water could sustain farms, settlements and industries hundreds of kilometres away from the river.

But the same logic was being applied across the basin. Irrigated agriculture expanded dramatically in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, while increasing quantities of water were removed before the Amu Darya reached its delta.

Yet large-scale irrigation itself was hardly a Soviet invention.

Downstream, communities had been redirecting the river for thousands of years.

Khorezm: a civilization built by canals

Few landscapes make that clearer than Khorezm.

Visitors arriving in Khiva encounter one of Central Asia’s most concentrated historic cityscapes: mud-brick walls, turquoise tiles, minarets and courtyards rising from an intensely arid environment.

What they do not encounter is the Amu Darya itself.

Khiva does not stand on the modern riverbank.

That apparent contradiction tells us almost everything about the historical relationship between Khorezm and water.

The city exists because the river was brought to it.

Khiva lies near the edge of cultivated land and historically received Amu Darya water through one of the major canals of the Khorezm oasis.

Long before modern states or Soviet hydraulic projects, inhabitants of Khorezm had learned to transform desert into an oasis through irrigation.

UNESCO’s documentation of the ancient towns and fortresses of the Aral Sea region dates irrigated agriculture in the lower Amu Darya to the end of the second millennium BC and directly links irrigation canals to the emergence of early cities in the region. Novastan has also explored the fortresses and historic landscapes of Khorezm, where the relationship between settlement and water remains visible across the region.

This history is not simply archaeological. The irrigation networks help explain why generations of people could live, farm, trade and build cities in an otherwise extremely arid landscape.

The lower river itself has never been completely stable.

Its channels shifted repeatedly. Canals silted up or were redirected. Settlements prospered and declined as their access to water changed. The Amu Darya still structures movement across Khorezm today, including crossings such as the pontoon bridge near Urgench previously featured by Novastan.

UNESCO’s documentation of ancient Khorezm explicitly notes that changes in the direction of the Amu Darya affected urban centres and that the region’s settlements were closely connected to the river’s shifting courses.

In Khorezm, controlling water meant controlling the geography of civilization itself.

Nukus: downstream of everyone

Approaching Nukus, the Amu Darya has travelled through an extraordinary accumulation of human interventions.

Upstream reservoirs regulate it.

Afghanistan is constructing new irrigation infrastructure from it.

Agricultural regions in Uzbekistan depend upon it.

Turkmenistan diverts part of it westwards.

By the time it reaches Karakalpakstan, the river represents the cumulative result of decisions made across an international basin.

Near Nukus, the Amu Darya spreads through a broad, flat landscape, its channel interrupted by exposed banks and low islands. It looks very different from the mountain water with which the journey began.

Nukus is downstream not simply geographically, but politically.

Communities near the end of a river do not determine their water supply alone. They receive the cumulative result of decisions made everywhere upstream.

That reality remains highly contemporary.

In June 2026, Uzbekistan, UNDP and the Global Environment Facility signed the concept for an Integrated Water Resources Management Plan for the Lower Amu Darya Basin. The initiative is intended to create a more coordinated and science-based framework for managing water resources and ecosystems in the lower river and Aral Sea region.

It represents an attempt to think of the lower Amu Darya increasingly as a connected hydrological system rather than simply as water divided between administrative territories.

But the scale of the historical damage becomes clearer farther north.

Muynak: a port without a sea

At Muynak, one of Central Asia’s most familiar images has almost become too familiar.

Fishing boats sit in sand.

Visitors photograph their rusting hulls. What was once evidence of economic collapse has acquired the strange afterlife of a tourist attraction.

But the boats matter because of what is absent around them.

Water.

The Aral Sea was once the world’s fourth-largest inland lake. Its hydrological balance depended heavily on the Amu Darya and Syr Darya. Massive diversion of river water for irrigation caused inflows to collapse and the sea to shrink and fragment.

For Muynak this was not simply an environmental statistic.

It meant the disappearance of the economic geography around which the town had developed.

Fishing and fish processing depended upon a shoreline that progressively moved away. As Oktyabr Dospanov recalled in Novastan’s interview, “My Childhood Was Spent on the Shore of a Sea That No Longer Exists,” Muynak was once a living port rather than the symbol of ecological catastrophe it has since become.

The rusting boats can be read almost as the final objects in a chain that begins in the mountains.

Reservoirs, canals, irrigation systems and agricultural decisions made hundreds or thousands of kilometres upstream all influence how much water ultimately reaches the lowest part of the basin.

The river’s history can almost be read backwards from Muynak.

The sea that did not entirely disappear

Popular descriptions often say simply that the Aral Sea “disappeared.”

The reality is more complicated.

The sea fragmented into separate bodies of water. Large parts of its former seabed are now exposed, while significant differences have developed between the remaining northern and southern water bodies. The ecological catastrophe has been immense, but the Aral is not literally gone.

That distinction matters.

It prevents the region from being reduced to a single image of irreversible apocalypse. The northern Small Aral has, for example, demonstrated that deliberate water-management interventions can produce at least partial ecological recovery.

On the Uzbek side, however, the landscape around the southern remnants conveys the scale of what has been lost.

One river, competing futures

It would be easy to tell the history of the Amu Darya solely as a story of environmental destruction.

That would also be incomplete.

The river continues to sustain millions of people and several very different development strategies.

Tajikistan wants electricity.

Afghanistan wants irrigated farmland.

Uzbekistan needs water for agriculture while attempting to make irrigation more efficient.

Turkmenistan remains deeply dependent on water transported away from the river through its canal system.

Karakalpakstan needs sufficient flows to sustain communities and ecosystems at the end of the basin.

All of these demands are understandable.

The difficulty is that they exist simultaneously.

Qosh Tepa therefore matters not because competition for the Amu Darya is new, but because the political geography of that competition is changing.

Afghanistan is becoming a far more significant water user in a system whose post-Soviet institutions were largely built without it. Tajikistan’s hydropower development, downstream irrigation, ecological restoration and climate pressures meanwhile have to coexist within the same hydrological system.

There is no single technological solution that eliminates that basic constraint.

More efficient irrigation can help. Better canals can help. Improved regional coordination can help. Basin-level management can help.

But none can make the Amu Darya infinite.

From ice to sand – and water again

The extraordinary thing about following the Amu Darya is how many different worlds can belong to a single river.

In the mountains, its water begins among snow and glaciers.

Along the Panj, it separates Afghanistan and Tajikistan.

On the Vakhsh, it becomes electricity.

At Termez, the river forms Uzbekistan’s frontier with Afghanistan while Airitom attempts to turn that frontier into a commercial gateway.

In Khorezm, canals carried the river towards cities that could never have survived without it.

Near Nukus, the consequences of decisions taken across the basin accumulate.

At Muynak, ships remain stranded where water once stood.

And farther beyond them, parts of the Aral Sea remain.

Central Asia’s cities are usually explained through monuments, rulers and empires – the walls of Khiva, Buddhist Termez, Nukus’s museums.

Another history runs beneath all of them.

It is a history of glaciers, channels, dams and canals.

The Amu Darya has determined where settlement was possible, where agriculture could flourish and where political power could accumulate for thousands of years.

High in the mountains, water still begins its journey towards the plains.

At the other end of that journey, ships stand in the desert while a diminished sea survives beyond them.

Between those two landscapes lies much of Central Asia’s past – and one of the defining questions of its future.

By Mathieu Lemoine, Editor-in-Chief for Novastan-English.

The post From the Pamirs to the Aral Sea: Following the Amu Darya Through Central Asia appeared first on Novastan English.

Archaeologist and museum specialist Oktyabr Dospanov on the lost world of Muynak, the memory of the Aral Sea and the cultural heritage of Karakalpakstan.

For much of the outside world, Muynak is represented by a single image: rusting ships stranded in a desert. For Oktyabr Dospanov, however, the town was once an island, a busy port and the setting of a childhood filled with ship bells, gulls, music and the smell of freshly caught fish. In this interview, the Karakalpak archaeologist and museum specialist recalls the human world that disappeared with the Aral Sea, explains why the region’s cultural history reaches far beyond the ecological catastrophe, and reflects on what should be preserved for future generations.

This interview was conducted in Russian and translated into English.

See more on Novastan: Souvenirs éphémères

The story of the Aral Sea is usually told through statistics: falling water levels, rising salinity, abandoned ports and millions of tonnes of salt and dust lifted from the exposed seabed. Those figures describe the scale of the disaster, but they cannot fully convey what it meant to lose a sea that organised the economy, culture and daily rhythms of an entire region. Dospanov belongs to the last generation that remembers the Aral as an ordinary presence rather than a vanished world. Born in Muynak, he later became an archaeologist and museum specialist. His professional path began in 1979, when Igor Savitsky invited him to join an expedition at Janpyk Kala, an ancient Khorezmian settlement near the Sultan Uvays mountains. He subsequently worked at the museum in Nukus that now bears Savitsky’s name, devoting decades to the archaeology, ethnography, art and environmental history of Karakalpakstan.

Novastan: You grew up in Muynak when it was still a living port. What kind of town was it?

Oktyabr Dospanov: My childhood was spent in Muynak, which at that time was a real island in the Aral Sea. For me, it is not simply my birthplace. It was an entire world, filled with sounds, smells and the feeling of continuous life. It is difficult today to imagine that Muynak was once one of the region’s largest fishing centres.

The town’s life was inseparable from the sea. There were five large fishing collectives, twelve fish reception points and two cargo ports. One was in Muynak itself, on the shore, and the other was around twenty kilometres away at Usay, on the opposite side of the island. The fishing industry set the rhythm of the whole town.

Muynak seemed never to sleep. Even late at night, people were always walking through the streets: some going to work, others returning after their shift. Work continued around the clock. I can still hear the ship bells, the grinding of the port cranes, and the hum of fishing vessels and engines. These sounds were a natural part of everyday life.

The city was also remarkably diverse. Engineers, sailors, fishermen, teachers, doctors, scientists and artists came from across the Soviet Union. Karakalpaks, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Russians, Tatars, Koreans, Ukrainians and many others lived side by side. In the mahallas, neighbours helped one another build houses, celebrated holidays together and supported families in difficult times. That sense of community was one of Muynak’s greatest riches.

What do you remember most vividly about the sea itself?

For my generation, the Aral was not a symbol of tragedy. It was the symbol of a happy childhood, filled with the sound of waves and the cries of gulls. Hundreds of vessels stood at Muynak’s quays: cargo ships, fishing schooners, tankers, barges and tugboats. The port operated day and night. It seemed impossible that the sea could ever disappear.

The coast was rich in life. There were reed beds, lakes and wetlands, and an extraordinary number of birds: pheasants, wild ducks, flamingos, pelicans and, above all, gulls. The silver gulls that local people affectionately called ‘laughing gulls’ accompanied us from morning until evening. Fishermen watched them because they could reveal the position of shoals of fish.

I also remember the clean, fresh air. The sea did not have the harsh salty smell that people often imagine. A constant wind made even the hottest summer days easier to bear. In winter, the sea froze and the cold was severe. We swam, fished and played football on the shore. Children came to the nearby pioneer camp from many parts of the Soviet Union, and the coast had holiday homes, sanatoriums and tourist facilities.

See more on Novastan: A sécher

What remains most powerfully in my memory is not a landscape but a smell. When I was five or six, my father and his friend Ibadulla took me out in a small wooden boat. Far from the shore, we met a large fishing seiner commanded by a man named Tazhibay-aga. He showed me the bridge, the cabins and the engine room. The hold was filled with fish. I pointed to the largest one, a huge catfish, and insisted that it was a shark. Everyone laughed.

We stayed on the vessel for almost two days. I saw how the fishermen worked and lived. The engine room smelled of diesel fuel, motor oil, metal, sea moisture, fresh fish, wooden decks and salt-soaked ropes. It was sharp, but warm and alive. To me, that was the smell of the real Aral Sea. Sometimes I close my eyes and I am back there, hearing the engine and the waves against the hull.

Muynak also had a social and cultural life that is rarely mentioned. Where did young people meet?

Muynak did not live by work alone. It had two cinemas. The best known was Sputnik, just a few steps from the shore and beside the market. After an evening screening in summer, people would walk along the waterfront, listen to the waves and stay outside talking for a long time. Later, in the second half of the 1980s, the Berdakh cinema opened in another part of the city. It was a modern cultural centre for films, concerts and public events.

The cultural centre of the fish-canning plant was another important place. It had a library and hosted theatre, amateur performances, concerts and celebrations. Young people especially loved the weekend dances. Many people met their future partners there.

There were also several cafes. The most famous was Tolqyn, which means ‘wave’ in Karakalpak. It was not simply somewhere to eat or drink tea. Families celebrated birthdays and weddings there, friends met, music played, and people exchanged news and made plans.

Music was everywhere. On warm evenings, young people gathered spontaneously in courtyards, on squares or near the sea. Someone would bring a guitar, accordion or bayan, and people would sing together. There were no mobile phones or social networks. People listened to one another and spent long evenings in company. At weddings and major family celebrations, bakhshi – traditional storytellers and musicians – performed epics and legends to the accompaniment of instruments such as the dutar. Ancient oral tradition and modern youth culture existed naturally alongside each other.

When did people understand that the retreat of the sea was irreversible?

The process was gradual. The first alarming signs became visible in the late 1960s and early 1970s. At first, people hoped it was temporary and that the sea would return. A special canal was dug from the port towards the receding water so that vessels could continue to sail. But the water withdrew faster than people could adapt.

Fishermen noticed the change first. Their catches became smaller. Fewer schooners went out. Ships that had entered the port freely began to run aground, surrounded by sand and salt blown from the exposed seabed.

Read more on Novastan: Football de rue

I remember how the sound of the city changed. Muynak had always lived through the noise of its port: bells, cranes, engines, fishermen’s voices, metal cables and waves at the quays. Then came silence. It arrived almost imperceptibly, but that silence was the most frightening thing. When the ships stop sounding, when the sea can no longer be heard and the port ceases to live, you understand that more than water is disappearing. An entire world is going.

The marine painter Rafael Matevosyan, who devoted more than half a century to the Aral Sea, described an early morning when he woke to voices and crying. Residents had gathered on the shore. Overnight, the water had retreated by dozens of metres. Boats that had been moored at the pier were lying on dry sand. Some people prayed, some cried and others simply stared at the departing water. Matevosyan later captured that moment in a painting called The Sea Has Gone.

The human consequences came quickly. Enterprises closed, fishing declined and families lost their livelihoods. Many people left Muynak for other cities or republics. The city lost not only employment and population, but also confidence in its future.

“Then came silence. It arrived almost imperceptibly, but that silence was the most frightening thing.”

What disappeared with the sea beyond the fishing industry?

Fishing was not just a source of income. It was one of the oldest forms of economic life in the Aral region and had shaped people’s identity for centuries. Archaeological excavations reveal fish represented on ceramics, bronze objects, wall paintings and household items. Fish also appeared in carpets, embroidery, jewellery, woodcarving and textiles. It symbolised water, life and prosperity in an arid region.

For many families, fishing and factory work passed from parents to children. To work at the fish-canning plant was considered respectable. People were proud that their labour mattered to the whole country. When the sea disappeared, traditions that had formed over generations also weakened: techniques and practical knowledge, recipes and fish cuisine, songs, stories and the everyday vocabulary of life by the water.

The psychological loss was equally important. Many residents came to feel that they had been left at the edge of a lifeless desert, far from the world’s attention, with the best part of their lives behind them. When former residents meet today, they often cry. Those tears express joy at seeing one another, but also nostalgia for a world that cannot be restored.

That is why the memories of the last witnesses matter so much. There are still people who remember the port cranes, the crowded waterfront, the smell of fresh fish and the horizon of open water, but their number decreases every year. Their oral histories, family photographs, songs and personal objects are part of the region’s heritage. The Aral Sea is not merely an environmental problem. It is the fate of millions of people.

Tourists now come to photograph the ship cemetery. What do you wish they understood about Muynak?

I am glad that people are interested in our region, but I would like them to see more than an unusual tourist attraction. Behind every ship is a human life. Behind every photograph are thousands of families who lost the world they knew. Every metre of exposed seabed contains the memories of people who sailed from this port, caught fish, built homes, raised children and believed the sea would last forever.

Visitors should try to imagine another picture: an expanse of water reaching the horizon, fishing vessels returning to port, gulls overhead, children laughing on the shore and a town full of movement. Only then can they understand what was lost.

At the same time, Karakalpakstan should not be reduced to catastrophe. This region has been a crossroads of nomadic and settled civilisations for thousands of years. The art of the Aral region carries images of animals, birds, plants, water and steppe. Its carpets, textiles, jewellery, embroidery, carved wood and yurt interiors preserve symbols that connect people to the natural world. Muynak was one part of a much wider cultural landscape.

Your own career began with archaeology. How did Igor Savitsky influence you?

My path into science began in 1979, when I met Igor Vitalyevich Savitsky. He invited me to join an archaeological expedition at Janpyk Kala, one of the great monuments of ancient Khorezm on the right bank of the Amu Darya. That expedition became my school of archaeology. It showed me how rich and insufficiently studied the history of Karakalpakstan was.

Savitsky later invited me to work at the museum in Nukus. He was not only a remarkable artist, collector and museum builder. He taught a whole generation to see culture as an interconnected whole. Through him, I understood that archaeology is not simply excavation. It is a way of understanding people, their worldview and their relationship with nature, history and art.

Karakalpakstan is an open-air museum. It has hundreds of archaeological sites, from antiquity to the late medieval period. Ancient Khorezm stood at the meeting point of major Eurasian trade and cultural routes. Nomadic and settled worlds interacted here, alongside influences from Iran, the Mediterranean, the steppe, Turkic states, the Arab world and Central Asia. Irrigation systems created from at least the first millennium BCE made possible cities, fortresses, palaces and settlements in desert landscapes.

The region’s spiritual history is equally layered. Zoroastrian, Buddhist, early Christian and Islamic traditions all left traces in monuments, rituals, ornament and symbolism. Archaeology records those processes in layers of soil and objects, while oral tradition preserves them in images and stories. Both are necessary.

Savitsky’s importance also lies in the way he built the museum. When he founded it in 1966, he created departments of archaeology and ethnography alongside the art collection. He had first come to Karakalpakstan through the Khorezm Archaeological and Ethnographic Expedition, and during fieldwork he produced hundreds of paintings and drawings of archaeological sites, village life, plants, animals and the region’s changing light. He was interested in the smallest details of traditional culture – a ceramic ornament, carved wood, a textile pattern or a piece of metalwork – because he saw each of them as a language through which a people expressed its worldview.

His study of Karakalpak traditional woodcarving remains especially important to me. He showed how the decorative culture of the region emerged from the meeting of settled agricultural traditions and the nomadic culture of the steppe. At the same time, he understood that many Russian artists of the 1920s and 1930s had been erased from public life by repression and ideological pressure. He largely gave up his own artistic career to find, protect and collect their work. That devotion created one of the world’s most important collections of Russian avant-garde and early Soviet art.

He was equally committed to the emerging Karakalpak school of painting. Kydyrbay Saipov, then the region’s only professionally trained artist, became his close friend and ally. Together they encouraged younger artists, organised exhibitions and helped create an artistic environment in which remarkable talents could develop. Among the painters associated with this generation were Zhollybay Izentaev, Zholdasbek Kutymuratov, Abdulla Erimbetov, Bazarbay Serekeev, Aman Atabaev, Murat Khudaybergenov, Daribay Tazhimuratov and Amangeldy Utegenov.

My strongest memory of Savitsky is still from the expeditions. He was modest and extraordinarily hardworking. He could spend hours examining a ceramic vessel, an ornament or a fragment of cloth, explaining its symbols and the techniques used to make it. Every find and every meeting with a traditional craftsperson delighted him. He did not merely study culture; he lived through it.

Which landscapes or historical places best reveal the depth of Karakalpakstan?

The Ustyurt Plateau is unlike anywhere else. Its chinks, cliffs and canyons are magnificent, but the landscape also contains ancient and medieval burial mounds, necropolises, caravanserais, wells and signal towers. They recall the routes that connected East and West across an extremely demanding environment. The saiga is a symbol of Ustyurt, and images of these animals appear in rock art thousands of years old.

The former seabed is also becoming a new and extraordinary landscape. It attracts ecologists, geologists, archaeologists and palaeontologists. Along former shorelines, people find fossil shells, marine remains and, according to local accounts, even the teeth of ancient sharks – reminders that the geological history of this territory reaches back to seas far older than the Aral.

Karakalpakstan is therefore much more than a disaster zone. It is a place where one can read the history of the Earth and the history of human civilisation in the same landscape. Natural and cultural heritage are inseparable here.

Can the region recover environmentally, and what has changed through the planting of saxaul?

When the sea dried, its exposed bottom became a saline desert. Dust and salt storms carried sand, salt and chemical residues over enormous distances. Planting saxaul, kandym and other desert shrubs was one of the most effective ways to stabilise the soil. After decades of work, vegetation now covers significant areas of the former seabed, reducing the intensity of dust and salt storms and creating conditions for new ecosystems. Some animals and birds are returning.

This does not mean the crisis is solved. Safe drinking water, efficient water management, public health, education, transport and sustainable employment remain fundamental. Climate change adds pressure by altering rainfall, accelerating glacier loss in the Pamirs and Tien Shan, and changing the flow of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya. The full restoration of the former sea is an extremely difficult question and cannot depend on one country alone. It requires regional cooperation and rational water use.

The most important lesson is that economic development must not again be built on the assumption that nature is inexhaustible. Any new investment should create dignified local employment, use water responsibly and meet high environmental standards. The people who live here must benefit directly.

Whose work should people read or see if they want to understand Karakalpakstan beyond the Aral Sea disaster?

First, I would name Berdakh, the great Karakalpak poet. His work became one of the spiritual foundations of the national culture. It speaks about the history of the people, moral values, love of the native land and the search for justice and freedom. No less important is Ajiniyaz, one of Central Asia’s major poets and thinkers, whose writing celebrated solidarity between peoples, humanism and respect for human dignity.

In the visual arts, one must of course return to Igor Savitsky and to the artists whose work he helped preserve. Rafael Matevosyan is also indispensable to the memory of the Aral Sea. For more than half a century he painted its water, boats, fishermen and everyday life. Gulls appear repeatedly in his work. After the sea had largely disappeared, he would visit the exposed seabed and say: ‘I believe my gulls will return.’ Those words were later inscribed on his grave.

There is also a deeply personal figure I do not want to omit: my uncle, the Karakalpak writer and translator Shaniyaz Mambetmuratov. He died when he was only 43, but he left an important mark on the literature and culture of Karakalpakstan. The Aral Sea was at the centre of his writing – its open waters, the Amu Darya, fishermen, the landscape and the lives, labour and hopes of ordinary people.

He was extraordinarily well read. It seemed that there was hardly a book in Muynak’s municipal library that he had not opened. He translated foreign authors into Karakalpak, hoping both to introduce local readers to world literature and to show outsiders the richness of his own culture. In the 1960s and 1970s, he used to say that one day Europeans would come to Muynak and the Aral Sea to discover the beauty, history and culture of this region. At the time, that sounded almost impossible.

Part of his work was translated into German and a collection was published in Germany, although he did not live to see it. In a sense, his prediction has now come true: people arrive from across the world, not only to witness an ecological catastrophe but also to learn about Karakalpakstan’s literature, culture, history and inhabitants. As long as his books are read, his voice continues to speak.

Dospanov shared two of his uncle’s poems, translated here, especially for Novastan, from Karakalpak via Russian.

The Seagull

1959

— Seagull, soaring high across the sky,
You seem a messenger of my love.
Why do you circle anxiously above me,
Calling me once more towards the seashore?

— Seagull, flying through the blue of heaven,
Why do you fill my heart with restless thoughts?
Had I not caressed the waves of the sea,
Would spring ever have returned to these shores?

The Blue Sea

1958

Do not judge me harshly when I praise the sea;
Simply look towards the blue edge of the earth.
Like a festive salute marking a great victory,
The blue sea laughs before my eyes.

This blue sea is my native Aral;
With all my soul, I breathe its fresh wind.
And should you wish to know what makes it so majestic,
Know this: within it live both my destiny and my age.

Who else should journalists speak to while the memory of the old Muynak is still alive?

They should begin with the remaining members of the older generation: former fishermen, ship captains, workers from the fish-canning plant and residents of the coastal settlements. They remember the cranes, boats, factory, crowded waterfront, fresh fish and uninterrupted horizon. Such memories cannot be reconstructed from official archives once the witnesses are gone.

It is equally important to record artists, musicians, traditional craftspeople and guardians of oral culture. Young ecologists, archaeologists, museum professionals, historians and civic activists should also be heard, because they connect the past with the region’s future. And journalists should not overlook teachers, farmers, doctors, students and women raising families. The real history of Karakalpakstan is made from many ordinary lives, not only from famous names.

We are among the last living witnesses of the full Aral Sea. That creates a duty to preserve oral testimony, family photographs, private archives, household objects, songs and stories. These materials are as important to the region’s heritage as archaeological monuments and museum collections.

What gives you hope when you think about the future of Muynak and Karakalpakstan?

Above all, people give me hope. Despite everything this region has experienced, its inhabitants have not lost their love for their land or their willingness to work for its future. Human resilience has always been the main strength of the Aral region.

I see a younger generation studying foreign languages, ecology, archaeology, art, museum work, science and information technology. Many of them do not want to turn away from their history. They want to preserve it and show the world that Karakalpakstan is a region of extraordinary cultural heritage and future possibilities.

The world’s growing interest also matters. Archaeologists, artists, scientists, photographers, travellers and students come not only because of the Aral Sea, but also for ancient Khorezm, Ustyurt, the Savitsky Museum and Karakalpak culture.

If I had unlimited resources, I would set three priorities. The first would be human welfare: drinking water, health care, education, infrastructure and good jobs, particularly so that young people can imagine a future here. The second would be ecological restoration and responsible use of natural resources, including water-saving technologies and continued planting on the former seabed. The third would be culture, science and international cooperation. I would like Karakalpakstan to become a major centre for archaeology, museum partnerships, artistic residencies, environmental education and cultural tourism.

The future cannot rest only on natural resources or only on economic growth. It must bring people, nature and culture into balance.

Is there one story you would most like European readers to carry with them?

I would tell them the story of the Camel Trail. Elders said that long before modern roads, caravan routes crossed Ustyurt and the shores of the Aral Sea. Camels connected Khorezm with the Volga region, Kazakhstan and lands farther east and west. They sensed the route better than people and could find wells and caravanserais even at night, in sandstorms or fog.

One trail, used by generations of caravans, led towards the Aral Sea. It was not merely a road. It carried trade, encounters, knowledge and culture. Merchants, craftsmen, poets and pilgrims travelled along it. Goods moved with songs, legends, ideas and traditions.

As the sea retreated, harbours vanished and routes were covered by sand. Yet people say the Camel Trail did not disappear. It survived in memory. You may no longer see it on a map, but you can feel it when travelling through the region. It is an invisible thread between past and present.

For me, the legend means that the most important roads do not cross only deserts and steppes. They pass through human memory. Today, the trail can acquire a new meaning. Where caravans once carried goods, it can now carry research, cultural projects, art and friendship between peoples. It can become a symbol of dialogue between Central Asia and Europe.

Perhaps the trail no longer exists on the ground. But while memory remains alive, the road never ends.

Mathieu Lemoine, Editor-in-Chief for Novastan-English

The post “My Childhood Was Spent on the Shore of a Sea That No Longer Exists” appeared first on Novastan English.

The world’s largest inland body of water is shrinking. From disappearing sturgeon and stranded ports to an unreliable trans-Caspian ferry and borders drawn around a moving shoreline, the consequences extend far beyond the environment.

For travellers hoping to cross the Caspian Sea between Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, the journey has never resembled an ordinary international ferry connection.

Read more on Novastan: Hundreds of lifeless Caspian seals washed ashore in Turkmenistan

There is generally no dependable passenger timetable. The vessels are primarily designed to transport freight, railway wagons and vehicles, accepting individual passengers when operational conditions permit. Travellers may be told to wait in Aktau or Kuryk until sufficient cargo has accumulated, or to make their way to Alat, approximately 70 kilometres south of Baku, without knowing exactly when their ship will depart. Recent travel accounts continue to describe waits lasting several days.

This unreliability predates the current environmental crisis. It reflects freight-centred operations, poor passenger information and limited coordination between ports. But the difficulties now facing Caspian navigation are no longer only organisational.

The water itself is retreating.

At Aktau and Kuryk, the Kazakh ports that connect Central Asia to Azerbaijan, the Caucasus and Europe, falling water levels are making navigation channels shallower and increasing the need for dredging – the removal of mud, sand and sediment from the seabed to maintain sufficient depth for ships. Vessels designed for deeper water may have to carry lighter loads. Infrastructure built for an earlier shoreline risks becoming progressively less effective.

The contrast is striking. Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, the European Union and international financial institutions increasingly promote the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route, better known as the Middle Corridor, as a strategic bridge between Asia and Europe. Yet the sea at the centre of that corridor is becoming physically less navigable.

The Caspian has fluctuated throughout recorded history, rising and falling in response to changes in river flow, precipitation, temperature and evaporation. But since the mid-1990s, its level has followed a predominantly downward trajectory. Satellite-based research has estimated a decline of nearly seven centimetres annually between 1996 and 2015, accelerating to approximately ten centimetres annually between 2006 and 2021.

The eventual scale remains uncertain. Scientific projections differ according to future greenhouse-gas emissions, river inflows and the models used. But even a decline of five metres would transform the northern and eastern Caspian, where the water is exceptionally shallow. A fall of five to ten metres could critically disrupt ecosystems, remove most of the effective coverage of existing protected areas and leave billions of dollars of industrial and civil infrastructure obsolete.

The Caspian is not about to disappear entirely. Its southern basin reaches depths of more than 1,000 metres. But a body of water does not need to vanish to cease performing the functions on which surrounding societies depend. Ports can become inaccessible. Wetlands and fishing grounds can disappear. Ships can lose carrying capacity. Settlements built around the coast can find themselves kilometres from the water.

For Central Asia, the retreating Caspian is becoming an environmental crisis, an economic constraint and a test of whether regional governments can cooperate before physical change overtakes political planning.

A sea dependent on distant rivers

The Caspian has no natural outlet to the ocean. Water enters through rivers and precipitation and leaves primarily through evaporation. Its level is therefore determined by the balance between inflow and water lost from its surface.

The system is also highly unequal. Although more than one hundred rivers flow into the Caspian, the Volga provides the overwhelming majority of its river water. The Ural, Kura and several smaller rivers supply much of the remainder.

This means that the fate of the Caspian is affected by decisions taken far from its shores. Reservoir management, hydropower, irrigation, industrial consumption and urban water use throughout the Volga basin can influence the quantity and timing of water reaching the sea.

It would nevertheless be misleading to attribute the present decline solely to dams or Russian water management. Rising temperatures increase evaporation from the Caspian’s vast surface, while changing precipitation and runoff affect its drainage basin. The water balance of a closed inland sea is especially sensitive to sustained warming.

The northern basin is the most immediately exposed. Much of it is only a few metres deep, meaning that a relatively modest vertical fall can produce a dramatic horizontal retreat. In Kazakhstan, new stretches of exposed seabed are already emerging around the northeastern coast and the Ural River delta.

Read more on Novastan: Mer Caspienne : sommet décisif au Kazakhstan

These areas are not empty margins. They contain wetlands, bird habitats, fish nurseries and communities whose economic life developed around access to the water.

As the seabed dries, another problem may emerge. Salt, industrial contaminants and other pollutants accumulated in coastal sediments can be exposed to the wind. The experience of the Aral Sea has shown how a disappearing shoreline can become a source of dust carrying salt and toxic residues across large distances.

The comparison between the Aral and Caspian seas must be used carefully. The destruction of the Aral Sea was driven principally by the massive diversion of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya for irrigated agriculture. The Caspian is vastly larger, and climate-driven evaporation plays a much more significant role in its decline.

But the political lesson is relevant. Environmental catastrophe does not begin when the last water disappears. It begins when ecological and economic systems become unable to adapt to cumulative damage.

When the Soviet Union tried to close the Caspian’s “black throat”

The idea that the Caspian’s water level could be controlled through a decisive engineering intervention is not new.

On the Turkmen coast, a narrow strait connects the Caspian to Garabogazköl, also known by its Russian name, Kara-Bogaz-Gol. The vast, shallow lagoon is exceptionally saline. Caspian water flows into it and then evaporates, leaving behind concentrated salts and minerals.

During the Soviet period, planners came to see Garabogazköl as a leak through which the Caspian was losing valuable water. As the sea declined during the 1970s, the lagoon’s intense evaporation appeared to offer a straightforward explanation and an equally straightforward solution: close the channel.

A dam completed in 1980 blocked the connection between the Caspian and the lagoon. Without a continuous inflow, Garabogazköl rapidly contracted. By the middle of the decade, much of it had become an exposed salt basin. The ecological consequences extended beyond the lagoon itself, as winds carried salt from the dry surface across the surrounding territory.

Read more on Novastan: Agreement between Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan paves the way for Trans-Caspian Pipeline

In 1992, shortly after Turkmenistan became independent, the barrier was demolished and Caspian water was allowed to return.

The episode is more than an environmental curiosity. It shows the danger of approaching the Caspian as a hydraulic machine whose individual components can be blocked or redirected without wider consequences.

Closing Garabogazköl did not provide a durable solution to the Caspian’s fluctuations. Instead, it transferred the crisis from one body of water to another. By the time the lagoon was reconnected, the Caspian itself had begun rising again, illustrating how poorly its changing water balance had been understood.

The history matters today because falling levels may once again generate proposals for major engineering responses. Some ideas envisage regulating river flows, diverting water between basins or restricting the movement of water into highly evaporative areas. Others concentrate on dredging, artificial channels and the relocation of ports.

Some adaptation will be unavoidable. But Garabogazköl offers a warning against solutions that treat one symptom in isolation. The Caspian is an interconnected ecological system, not merely a reservoir to be managed for maximum economic utility.

The disappearance of the sturgeon

No species is more closely associated with the Caspian than the sturgeon.

For centuries, sturgeon fisheries supported communities around the sea and supplied the caviar trade for which the region became internationally famous. The fish migrate between the Caspian and its rivers, depending on access to spawning grounds in waterways such as the Volga and Ural.

Their decline began long before the present acceleration in falling water levels. Dams restricted access to spawning grounds, while pollution, overfishing and the illegal caviar trade placed enormous pressure on populations. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the weakening of fisheries management and expansion of poaching further devastated stocks.

Official sturgeon landings across the Caspian fell from approximately 28,500 tonnes in 1985 to around 1,345 tonnes in 2005. More recent assessments describe Caspian sturgeon populations as being in critical condition.

Read more on Novastan: La mer Caspienne en état d’urgence

Hatcheries have released millions of young sturgeon in an attempt to compensate for the loss of natural reproduction. But stocking programmes cannot fully replace functioning rivers, wetlands and coastal habitats.

The shrinking sea adds another layer of pressure. The northern Caspian and its river deltas provide shallow feeding and nursery environments. As these areas retreat, salinity changes and habitats fragment, populations already damaged by decades of exploitation lose more of the conditions they need to recover.

The decline of the sturgeon therefore captures the cumulative character of the Caspian crisis. Climate change is not acting on an untouched ecosystem. It is amplifying damage created by dams, hydrocarbons, industrial pollution, illegal fishing and weak regional governance.

The loss is also cultural and economic. The sturgeon is not merely a biodiversity indicator. It represents a way of life that once connected fishing communities from Kazakhstan and Russia to Azerbaijan and Iran. Its disappearance would mark the collapse of one of the Caspian’s most distinctive shared traditions.

The Middle Corridor meets a shallower sea

The economic consequences of declining water levels are becoming particularly important as the Caspian assumes a larger place in Eurasian transport policy.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine increased European and Asian interest in routes that avoid Russian territory. The Middle Corridor carries goods from China and Central Asia across Kazakhstan, the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Türkiye toward European markets.

Its maritime section depends primarily on the ports of Aktau and Kuryk in Kazakhstan and Baku’s port facilities at Alat in Azerbaijan. Turkmenbashi also has the potential to connect Turkmenistan and neighbouring countries to trans-Caspian trade.

International assessments have warned that falling Caspian levels may require continued dredging, vessels with shallower draughts and improved navigation systems.

Read more on Novastan: By the Caspian Sea

These are not marginal technical adjustments. Ships unable to enter fully loaded carry less cargo at a higher unit cost. Repeated dredging requires sustained expenditure and can create further environmental disruption. Port infrastructure may have to be extended or relocated as the shoreline changes.

There is also a risk that investment decisions will be based on a static understanding of the sea. A terminal planned according to today’s water level may be poorly adapted to conditions two or three decades from now. Infrastructure with an expected operational life of fifty years must now be assessed against several possible Caspian futures.

The unreliable passenger connection between Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan exposes another weakness in official corridor narratives. For governments and financial institutions, the Caspian is often represented as a segment on a trade map: containers arrive at one port, cross the water and continue westward.

For travellers, the experience is far less seamless. The absence of a regular passenger timetable, uncertain departures and long waits demonstrate that the Caspian has not yet become an integrated regional transport space.

Falling water levels did not cause these organisational failures. But they can compound them by making navigation and port operations more expensive and less predictable.

If the Middle Corridor is intended to become a durable alternative between Europe and Asia, its planners must prepare not only for greater freight volumes but for the transformation of the sea itself.

Legal boundaries around a moving shoreline

For much of the period following the collapse of the Soviet Union, diplomatic arguments about the Caspian concentrated on whether it should legally be treated as a sea or a lake.

The distinction mattered because it could affect how the surface, seabed, fisheries and hydrocarbon resources were divided. Russia and Iran were joined after 1991 by three newly independent coastal states – Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan – each seeking access to offshore resources and control over maritime space.

The five countries eventually avoided choosing between the conventional categories. The Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea, signed in Aktau in 2018, created a special regime designed specifically for the basin.

It allows each state to establish territorial waters extending up to 15 nautical miles, followed by a ten-nautical-mile fishing zone. The remaining surface is intended for common use, while neighbouring states negotiate the division of sectors of the seabed. The Convention also excludes the military forces of non-Caspian states.

Read more on Novastan: Kazakhstan continues to assert itself as the “key link” in the Middle Corridor

The agreement was a major diplomatic achievement, but it was developed primarily around security, navigation, fisheries and hydrocarbons. It assumed that the sea’s basic physical geography would remain broadly recognisable.

A retreating shoreline complicates that assumption.

Territorial waters are measured from coastal baselines. As the water withdraws, islands may become connected to the mainland, bays may disappear and newly exposed land may alter the practical geography of coastal access. Fishing grounds and ecologically important habitats can shift away from the zones intended to regulate or protect them.

Existing bilateral seabed agreements are unlikely to be automatically overturned each time the shoreline moves. Yet practical questions will multiply. Who is responsible for newly exposed seabed? How should states manage wetlands that migrate across administrative or protected-area boundaries? What happens when navigation channels must be repeatedly dredged or moved?

The Convention has also not yet entered into force. As of the latest publicly confirmed position, Iran remained the only littoral state that had not completed ratification, with the issue expected to feature ahead of the Caspian summit planned in Tehran in August 2026.

The Caspian states spent more than two decades negotiating how to divide and use the sea. They are now confronting a different problem: how to apply those rules when the physical sea retreats from the lines drawn around it.

Cooperation without sufficient urgency

The main regional framework for environmental cooperation is the Tehran Convention, signed in 2003 by Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan.

At COP29 in Baku, representatives of the five states formally recognised the serious ecological, economic and social consequences of declining water levels. Work has since continued on a regional action plan, including meetings during 2025 and a high-level dialogue in Astana in April 2026.

This recognition is important, but it does not yet amount to a sufficiently ambitious adaptation strategy.

The region needs comparable hydrological data, shared climate scenarios and infrastructure planning based on different possible levels of decline. Coastal protected areas must be capable of moving with habitats rather than remaining fixed around today’s shoreline. Ports require coordinated investment, while fishing communities need support as traditional livelihoods become less viable.

The Volga’s importance makes Russian participation indispensable. Yet cooperation is constrained by sanctions, the war against Ukraine and distrust between the Caspian states. Governments also have competing interests in oil and gas production, transport corridors, fisheries and territorial control.

Environmental cooperation cannot avoid these political realities. Nor can engineering adaptation replace efforts to reduce pollution, protect river ecosystems and limit global warming.

The European Union also has a direct interest. It is promoting the Middle Corridor, closer economic links with Central Asia, renewable-energy connections and partnerships concerning critical raw materials.

Those policies cannot treat the Caspian merely as a neutral transport surface. European support for ports and logistics should incorporate long-term water-level projections, environmental monitoring and biodiversity protection. Otherwise, international institutions risk financing infrastructure built for a Caspian that no longer exists.

A sea does not have to disappear

The retreat of the Caspian is already visible, but its political consequences remain easier to postpone than its physical ones.

Governments can commission another study, organise another regional meeting or dredge another shipping channel. Each action may be useful. None resolves the fundamental mismatch between a rapidly changing environment and institutions designed around stability.

Garabogazköl demonstrated the danger of attempting to correct the Caspian through a single dramatic intervention. The collapse of sturgeon populations shows what happens when cumulative ecological damage is allowed to continue for decades. The Aktau-Alat ferry reveals how distant the region remains from the seamless connectivity presented in official strategies. The unfinished legal Convention illustrates how slowly political structures move compared with the shoreline.

The Caspian will not vanish like the Aral Sea. But its northern and eastern coasts could be transformed beyond recognition. Wetlands may disappear, ports may be stranded and communities may lose access to the water that shaped their economies and identities.

What remains uncertain is the eventual magnitude of the decline. Its direction is no longer seriously in doubt.

Central Asia already knows that a disappearing inland sea can be treated as an economic sacrifice until the damage becomes irreversible. The Caspian offers the region another warning – this time while there is still enough water, infrastructure and ecological life left to protect.

Mathieu Lemoine, Editor-in-Chief for Novastan-English

The post The Caspian Sea Is Retreating. Central Asia Is Not Ready appeared first on Novastan English.

Like many countries, Kazakhstan is facing major environmental problems. Kazakh media outlet The Village has listed the environmental issues most frequently discussed in the country.

Kazakhstan continues to actively address the environmental challenges affecting different regions of the country.

In recent years, the environmental situation in major cities has deteriorated significantly: the basins of many water bodies are gradually drying up, emissions of harmful substances exceed permitted levels several times over, and industrial enterprises are releasing chemicals into the environment in an uncontrolled manner.

Kazakh media outlet The Village has listed the main ecological problems facing the country.

Air pollution

For many years, the East Kazakhstan region remained the country’s largest industrial region. According to the Bureau of National Statistics, more than 15,000 companies are registered there. These include major industrial giants such as Kazzinc, KazMinerals, the Ust-Kamenogorsk Titanium and Magnesium Plant, the Ulba Metallurgical Plant and others.

The mining and metallurgical company Kazzinc, which produces zinc, copper, lead and other precious metals, is the most significant source of pollution. According to the region’s ecology department, in 2021 Kazzinc accounted for almost half of all pollutant emissions in the region.

Read also on Novastan : Au Kazakhstan, les villes industrielles souffrent de la pollution atmosphérique

According to Kazhydromet, in the city of Ust-Kamenogorsk, the region’s administrative centre, unfavourable weather conditions are recorded around 100 days a year. These are days when there is no wind in the region, causing harmful substances to accumulate in the air. During such periods, scientists even advise residents to avoid long walks outdoors, not to open windows, and to prioritise distance learning for schoolchildren.

Today, the East Kazakhstan region tops the national ranking for cancer incidence. The rate in the oblast is 55% higher than the national average: 321 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. Residents themselves say they have been experiencing a sweet, metallic taste in their mouths for years.

Polluted rivers

Senator Olga Bulavkina has highlighted the critical level of air pollution in Ust-Kamenogorsk, noting that hydrogen chloride levels exceed the norm by nine times. She has also linked this pollution to the increase in cancer cases.

Representatives of the prosecutor’s office have stated that, out of the region’s 165 landfills, only 22 comply with environmental requirements — just 13%.

It should be noted that pollution of local water bodies is regularly recorded in the region. In May 2019, residents noticed that the Berezovka River had turned bright green. Following an inspection, scientists found that the water contained 140 times the permitted level of manganese, 44 times the permitted level of zinc, twice the permitted level of ammonium, and five times the permitted levels of sulphate and copper.

Kazzinc was held responsible for uncontrolled discharges and fined 8 million tenge, or €14,640. In July 2023, residents noticed that the water in the Filippovka River had turned milky white. Kazzinc again paid a fine, this time of 50 million tenge, or €91,589.

Modernising industrial facilities to reduce pollution

It is important to note that many rivers in East Kazakhstan are tributaries of the Irtysh. They form part of a single ecosystem. When one body of water is polluted, there is always a risk that harmful substances will enter other channels. The water from these rivers is used not only for drinking water, but also for agriculture and for the operation of thermal power plants and industrial enterprises.

Read also on Novastan : Kazakhstan : une hécatombe de cygnes causée par la pollution

As a result, the Ust-Kamenogorsk metallurgical complex had to modernise its sulphur gas purification units, which should reduce sulphur emissions by 10 to 20%. In Ridder, a new workshop was built, reducing emissions by 714 tonnes in 2024.

On 9 October 2024, it was announced that an environmental air monitoring system was being introduced and that eco-offices would be opened to allow residents to monitor air quality themselves. Work is also under way to improve the emissions monitoring system. This was stated by the akim, or local government representative, of the East Kazakhstan region, Ermek Kosherbayev.

Air pollution in Almaty

In January 2025, Almaty topped the ranking of the world’s most polluted megacities. According to environmentalists from the Almaty Air Initiative, one year of living in the city is equivalent to smoking 487 cigarettes. Annual emissions of pollutants into the atmosphere amount to around 125,000 tonnes.

In addition, according to a survey carried out by the Almaty Air Initiative in August 2024, 42% of respondents believe that air quality in their neighbourhood is poor or very poor. One in six residents is considering moving because of the poor environmental conditions.

Read also on Novastan : La pollution de l’air toujours aussi forte en Asie centrale

In 2024, 202 days of high air pollution were recorded in Almaty. Specialists recommend that residents limit their time outdoors and use protective masks, particularly those who are especially sensitive.

At a meeting of the Public Council, data on the main sources of pollution in Almaty were presented. Motor transport is the city’s main source of air pollution, accounting for around 60% of total emissions. Industrial enterprises also heavily pollute the environment, emitting around 27.5% of all harmful substances. The use of coal heating in private homes also contributes to air pollution, accounting for around 11% of total emissions.

The government is aware of the problem

In November 2022, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, addressing Almaty residents, raised the issue of air pollution in the city. He noted that the state of the environment has a direct impact on people’s health and lives.

During a meeting with residents of the Zhetysu district, Almaty akim Yerbolat Dossayev explained how the city intends to address environmental problems. According to him, the full modernisation of Combined Heat and Power Plant 2 will be completed in 2026, which should reduce emissions by 90%.

Transport is also being actively developed. By the end of 2026, the city has promised to replace all public transport with environmentally friendly vehicles.

Waste disposal

Waste and rubbish are also among Almaty’s main environmental problems. A large number of illegal dumps have accumulated in the city, and waste recycling remains difficult. During a meeting with residents of the Almaty region in October 2022, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev called for all tourist routes to be equipped with rubbish bins and for waste collection and sorting to be organised. He also instructed the Ministry of Internal Affairs to step up efforts to bring those responsible for illegal dumps to justice.

Plans are being discussed to build a waste recycling plant in the Ile district and another facility in the Karasay district, which would recycle waste and produce electricity from greenhouse gases.

Also read on Novastan : Décharges sauvages au Kazakhstan : d’où viennent-elles, et comment lutter contre ?

As early as 26 February 2022, a rally for clean air was organised in Almaty. Participants called on the authorities to take urgent and comprehensive measures, arguing that the city was on the brink of an ecological disaster. Among the participants were activists, experts, students and families with children.

At the rally, expert Aiymgul Kerimray accused the authorities of manipulating emissions data and called for a transition to European standards for assessing pollution. Activist Asiya Tulesova called on the state not only to listen, but also to act.

The drying up of the Aral Sea

Until 1960, the Aral Sea was the fourth-largest lake in the world. But because of Soviet irrigation projects, the Syr Darya and Amu Darya rivers, which fed the basin, were diverted.

As a result, over the past 60 years, the Aral Sea has shrunk by a factor of three, while its volume has decreased fifteenfold. Its water level has fallen by 29 metres. In the 1980s, the sea split into two parts: the northern Small Aral and the southern Large Aral. This tragedy led to the migration of most of the region’s wildlife, the disappearance of fish, and the emergence of the Aralkum Desert.

Also read on Novastan : Le totalitarisme de l’irrigation a tué la mer d’Aral

In 2023, the akim of the Kyzylorda region, Nurlybek Nalibayev, stated that tens of millions of tonnes of salt and dust are carried by the wind every year from the dried-up bed of the Aral Sea. They travel thousands of kilometres. “The only way to prevent salt from spreading beyond the sea area is to plant saxauls,” a type of Central Asian tree, he said.

According to the akim, 350,000 hectares of saxaul were planted on the dried-up bed of the Aral Sea between 2021 and 2022.

A full restoration of the sea is impossible

However, scientists have expressed doubts about the possibility of fully restoring the Aral Sea. Ecologist Yevgeny Simonov has said that the region’s water deficit is increasing and that it is more realistic to speak of preserving delta water bodies and wetlands than of fully restoring the sea.

Mels Yeleusizov, president of the environmental movement Tabigat, notes that the drying up of the Aral Sea leads to the spread of salty dust, which settles on glaciers and accelerates their melting. He stresses that the disappearance of this body of water has a negative impact on Kazakhstan’s ecosystem, contributing to desertification and the deterioration of the region’s environment.

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At the expense of the state and regional budgets, 101,000 hectares were planted in 2021. In 2022, phytoremediation work was carried out over an area of 250,000 hectares, and in 2023 over an area of 193,200 hectares. From 2024 to 2025, these phytoremediation efforts targeted 556,200 hectares.

Thanks to agreements reached with neighbouring countries, a total of 1.6 billion cubic metres of water had been sent to the northern part of the Aral Sea by the end of March 2025. In April of the same year, the total volume of water in the northern Aral Sea stood at 22.1 billion cubic metres, 3.2 billion cubic metres more than at the beginning of 2022.

Daniyar Beisembayev and Sultan Temirkhan
Journalists for The Village

Translated from Russian by Sophie Combaret and from French by Mathieu Lemoine

Proofread by Elise Medina (French version)

The post Overview of environmental issues in Kazakhstan appeared first on Novastan English.

Used as a symbol throughout Central Asia, whether by sports clubs or municipalities, the snow leopard enjoys great popularity. This helps ensure its protection, as it is included on the international list of endangered animals.

The snow leopard, or irbis, is a large feline living in the mountains of Central and South Asia. Today, the species is on the Red List: only between 3,500 and 7,500 individuals remain worldwide. Officially, snow leopards have the status of a “vulnerable species”, one level below the “endangered” category.

In 2013, in Bishkek, during the Global Snow Leopard Conservation Forum, International Snow Leopard Day was established. It is celebrated on 23 October. On this date, experts and environmentalists organize various events dedicated to the protection of snow leopards.

Fergana News has decided to make its modest contribution to raising awareness about the preservation of rare species and is publishing an article prepared using data from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

From Afghanistan to Siberia

The irbis is a large mammal of the feline family, living exclusively in cold climates. The snow leopard has a long, slender body which, including the head, can reach 100 to 130 centimetres in length. Its thick coat, marked with dark ring-shaped spots, provides excellent protection against frost.

Its distinctive feature is its long, bushy tail, which measures between 80 and 105 centimetres. The predator weighs between 22 and 40 kilograms.

The geographical range of snow leopards is fairly vast, covering around 1.2 million square kilometres. It stretches from the Hindu Kush range in eastern Afghanistan, through the Pamir, the Tian Shan, the Karakoram and the Himalayas, as far as the Altai and the Sayan Mountains in southern Siberia.

These animals are therefore found in the territory of four former Soviet republics of Central Asia: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. These predators favour large prey, especially ungulates: sheep, mountain goats, argalis, roe deer and deer. But they also sometimes hunt smaller animals, such as ground squirrels and even birds.

A habitat threatened by human presence

The snow leopard fears humans. This is why, in some regions, it is called the ghost of the mountains. The animal lives at altitudes between 1,000 and 4,000 metres — more rarely up to 6,000 metres — above sea level and hides in caves and hard-to-reach valleys. It is practically impossible to encounter one. If one appears on a camera trap, it is already considered a real stroke of luck.

However, humans have managed to create problems even for these hermits. The issue is poachers engaged in the smuggling of wild ungulate horns. Illegal hunters reduce the food resources available to snow leopards.

Read also on Novastan : Sauver la panthère des neiges : comment les scientifiques luttent pour la survie d’une espèce

Shepherds also contribute to the problem. Because of pasture degradation, they are forced to move higher into the mountains, thereby driving irbises out of their usual habitats. Moreover, the felines remain predators and sometimes attack domestic livestock, risking becoming targets themselves for armed shepherds.

Climate change, linked to rising temperatures and the drying-up of glacial water sources, is also forcing the predators to migrate in search of more suitable habitats. All these factors have brought the snow leopard practically to the brink of extinction. Fortunately, some committed people understand the importance of preserving the mountain ecosystem, including its rare species.

A group of volunteers

In an area of the Tian Shan range in Kyrgyzstan, a group of volunteer rangers has formed and taken responsibility for monitoring 380 square kilometres in one of the harshest regions of Central Asia. Braving freezing cold and armed poachers, these volunteers strive to protect the prey and habitat of snow leopards.

As one of them, Baatyrbek Akmatov, explains, he and four of his companions are responsible for monitoring the Baiboosun community reserve. Many of these activists are former hunters and understand the scale of the damage caused to nature by wildlife smuggling, including of ibexes.

“We decided to launch this initiative, otherwise we will lose everything,” Baatyrbek Akmatov says of his group’s activities. “I don’t want to show children on my mobile phone that we once had this environment, these animals. I want them to be able to see them with their own eyes.”

The volunteers are supported by international organizations, in particular UNEP, as well as by local partners such as CAMP Alatoo and the Ilbirs Foundation. The project also receives financial support from Germany’s International Climate Initiative.

Changing mindsets

According to UNEP, the Kyrgyz government could not afford to pay the rangers, but gave them the authority to manage the territorial corridor and arrest poachers. In addition, experts from the United Nations Programme trained the volunteers and provided them with the necessary equipment.

At first, many local residents were outraged by the patrols. Shepherds feared they would be banned from grazing their livestock. But over time, according to Baatyrbek Akmatov, residents began to change their mindset, becoming aware of the importance of environmental protection.

UNEP’s partners became actively involved, training the population in agricultural practices less vulnerable to climate change. As a result, many people turned to beekeeping, cheese production or greenhouse farming, which helped increase their incomes.

The results of the patrols, the rangers say, are already being felt. For the first time in almost two decades, wild boars have returned to the region. Mountain goats, which had almost disappeared from sight, are now regularly observed. Deer antlers have also been discovered in the mountains, a sign that they too may be returning. Finally, recently, 12 snow leopards were spotted in and around the Baiboosun reserve.

Strict measures to protect the leopard in Uzbekistan

It should be emphasized that the protection of irbises is ensured at state level in all the former Soviet Central Asian republics where this feline species lives. It is listed in the Red Books of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

In addition, the authorities provide for penalties for hunting rare animals. For example, in Uzbekistan, poachers are prosecuted under the provisions of a government decree on damage to wildlife. According to this text, the fine for harming irbises amounts to 3,000 base calculation units — 1.2 billion soms, or 85,600 euros — for citizens of the republic, or 400,000 dollars — 343,000 euros at the Central Bank exchange rate — for foreigners.

Read also on Novastan : Deux léopards des neiges photographiés près du grand lac d’Almaty, une première en plus de 30 ans

Furthermore, in 2021, the Uzbekistani authorities adopted the Action Plan for the Conservation of the Snow Leopard in the country, covering the period up to 2030.

The snow leopard as a national symbol

The snow leopard is also remarkable for its imprint on culture and sport, becoming a widespread element of heraldry. The irbis is a national symbol for two countries. In Kazakhstan, this predator acquired this status during the presidency of Nursultan Nazarbayev. It was explained that, since ancient times, this rare animal had embodied power, strength and prosperity.

Indeed, the snow leopard appears on the national currency. It is represented on the 10,000 tenge banknote from the 2003 issue and on banknotes of the same value issued in 2024. The stylized high-mountain feline was also the official mascot of the 2011 Asian Winter Games, which were held in Almaty and Astana.

Since July 2025, the snow leopard has also appeared on new Kazakh passports, in holographic form, helping to protect the document against counterfeiting.

An ornament for many coats of arms

In December 2023, the president of Kyrgyzstan, Sadyr Japarov, signed a decree recognizing the snow leopard as a national symbol of the country. It was stated that the species was not only part of the country’s natural heritage, but also a symbol of national identity, strength and freedom, widely present in the republic’s culture, folklore and heraldry. Recognizing the irbis at such a high level was intended to unite the efforts of the authorities, scientists, civil society organizations and international organizations to protect and promote these felines.

The irbis appears on the coats of arms of certain cities, districts and republics, and not only in Central Asia. The animal has thus long adorned the heraldic emblems of Russian regions such as Tatarstan and the Republic of Khakassia, as well as districts of the Krasnoyarsk region, including Ermakovsky and Shushensky.

Read also on Novastan : Le léopard des neiges, symbole national de la diplomatie verte au Kirghizstan

As for Central Asian cities, the spotted feline has been incorporated into Almaty’s coat of arms since July 1993. It holds in its mouth a branch bearing eight apple blossoms, corresponding to the number of districts in the municipality.

Since January 1994, a highly stylized snow leopard has appeared on Bishkek’s main symbol. According to the emblem’s description, the irbis is drawn at the centre of an azure circle inside a white square. The whole composition is set against the background of a fortress silhouette, and beneath the broken line of the mountains appears the name of the Kyrgyz capital.

An ideal symbol for athletes

In July of the same year, the coat of arms of Samarkand, in Uzbekistan, was adopted, with the snow leopard also playing the central role. According to artist Grigory Ulko, who designed the emblem, he was inspired by a legend according to which an irbis descended from the mountains to bless the builders during the founding of the city. To better understand the structure of the predator’s muzzle, the artist drew his domestic cat, Prokhor.

One could say that the snow leopard leads a sporting life, so much do its strength and endurance attract the founders of sports clubs. For example, in the Kontinental Hockey League, two teams have chosen to refer to the animal in their names: Ak Bars Kazan and Barys Astana. The trend also extends to summer sports: in 2024, in the Kyrgyz city of Karakol, a team named Bars was created, with, of course, a magnificent irbis as its logo.

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But the most famous link between the big cat and sport is undoubtedly the title of “Snow Leopard”, awarded to seasoned mountaineers since the Soviet era, more precisely since the 1960s. Since 1990, this prestigious title has been awarded to those who have climbed five “7,000-metre peaks” of the former USSR: two peaks in the Tian Shan and three in the Pamir.

Such is the irbis: rare, discreet, but emblematic, especially in Central Asia.

The editorial team of Fergana News

Translated from Russian by Aruzhan Urazova and from French by Mathieu Lemoine.

The post How Central Asia is trying to protect the snow leopard appeared first on Novastan English.

As Kazakhstan officially starts the construction of its new nuclear plant, the region is overwhelmed with an extreme heat wave. The climate change is especially noticeable in the continental climate: in the land where summer temperature peak at 49 degrees Celcius is even the slightest upgrade dangerous. But the efforts to become climate neutral country prove to meet some complications. 

The temperatures in Kazakhstan – as anywhere in the world – are rising. The winter of 2024/2025 has been classified as ‘anomalously’ warm, as temperatures exceeded the norm by 2 to 6 degrees. Spring and summer have been way too hot as well: monthly reports show temperature records. Over the last 75 years, the average yearly temperature in Kazakhstan has risen by 6 degrees.

The efforts to counteract climate change, or at least to slow it down, are extremely relevant in this context. But the current starting point makes the green future look rather distant.

Fuel dependence in the background 

In 2023, Kazakhstan’s president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev signed the ambitious Strategy of the Republic of Kazakhstan on Achieving Carbon Neutrality by 2060. Nevertheless, in a country where the economy is deeply reliant on the fossil fuel industry, the shift toward renewable energy poses considerable difficulties.

Since Kazakhstan’s independence (now well over three decades ago), subsequent governments were betting on the extraction of fuel for continued economic growth, as well as securing investments through selling the exploration and recovery rights to fossil giants like British Petroleum, Exxon and Shell. Petroleum currently makes up 52,5% of Kazakhstan’s export, which earns the country up to 34,8 billion GBP annually. Whilst Russia is subjected to sanctions as a result of its war against Ukraine, western countries are looking for alternative suppliers. And Kazakhstan has proven to be an interesting partner in that regard – a fact reflected in the signing of new contracts, primarily for oil exports to Europe.

The fossil fuel industry remains far too profitable to scale back, let alone to significantly reduce oil production. Yet such a decline seems inevitable: if not driven by environmental imperatives, then by sheer necessity. Current forecasts suggest that known oil reserves could be exhausted within just 30 years at present production rates. While this projection may align with broader climate objectives, governments continue to pursue new exploration efforts in regions considered geologically promising.

The main problem: coal

Oil is only part of the problem. The energy sector in general is Kazakhstan’s number one source of greenhouse gas emissions. Although energy demand from industry accounts for just over a fifth of final energy consumption, more than a third is spent on the building sector. This is where coal processing comes in.

Kazakhstan possesses vast coal reserves, though extraction remains costly. The country’s largest deposits are relatively shallow but consist of exceptionally thick seams, making mining operations less efficient. In 2023, a tonne of coal could be purchased directly from mines for around 9,000 tenge – approximately £15.75 at the prevailing exchange rate – well below global market prices. For domestic consumers, transportation costs can nearly double that price, yet coal remains the most affordable source of energy production. However, its widespread use is responsible for more than half of Kazakhstan’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Most of Kazakhstan’s coal is consumed domestically, primarily to supply the country’s thermal power plants. Coal accounts for 99% of heat generation and more than half of total electricity production. However, many of these power stations are outdated and, in some cases, in disrepair. Most were built during the Soviet era and have long exceeded their intended operational lifespan.

Read more on Novastan: Kazakhstan stops investment agreement with ArcelorMittal after deadly explosion in Kostenko mine takes 46 lives

The government does not seem particularly willing to completely abandon coal. News outlet zakon.kz cites Kazakhstan’s Minister of Energy Yerlan Akkenzhenov: ‘We live on wealth. Coal-fired power generation is considered the cheapest option. In addition, the construction of combined heat and power plants also allows us to control the heat supply. As you know, all our cities are supplied by combined heat and power plants and a central heat supply. We must continue to pursue this approach […]’

As an alternative, the minister has proposed equipping the power plants with modern boilers that enable coal to be burned ‘without residue’. By 2035, ‘every combined heat and power plant will be gradually converted exactly to clean coal technology’.

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In a country with very cold winters, less than half of households are connected to a central heating network. In single-family detached homes, coal is frequently used as the main energy source for heating, which in turn contributes to the already high levels of smog produced by thermal power plants in big cities like Almaty. Taking into consideration the state of Kazakhstan’s housing stock, a considerable amount of energy gets wasted due to insufficient insulation or outdated heating systems. Ironically, even with the energy wasted, heating is still cheaper in the long term than investing in renovations.

Read more on Novastan: Breathing space: air quality and energy transition in Kazakhstan

Slow decarbonization in transport

A similar situation can be observed in the transport sector, the country’s second-largest energy consumer. The UN, in its roadmap for achieving the 7th sustainable development goal (‘Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all’), recommends that Kazakhstan decarbonize 15% of its passenger cars by 2050. Currently there are 6.17 million cars registered in the country, of which electric cars account for only 0.003%.

A quarter of a century is a long time – after all, 25 years ago, electric cars as we know them today did not even exist. However, the timeframe proposed by the UN seems optimistic for Kazakhstan: almost half of the cars in the country are at least 20 years old, and a significant proportion of these are cars would no longer pass vehicle safety tests, or would be banned from towns and cities for not meeting environmental standards. Although the government is planning to impose fines on car owners whose vehicles exceed emission standards, there are no plans to use the revenue to directly fund environmental initiatives. Many drivers only replace their cars when they are no longer roadworthy, and even then, they tend to turn to secondary and tertiary markets when looking for a replacement.

Switching to an electric car is not easy in Kazakhstan: all charging stations are located within the three largest cities – Astana, Almaty and Shymkent – and even there, their availability is limited. Due to the risk of fire, for example, it is prohibited to install charging stations in apartment parking areas. Electric car owners are hence dependent on public charging stations in large car parks and near shopping centres – which often do not supply green electricity.

According to internal research of a car manufacturer in the region, more than half of car owners do not consider electric cars as a purchase option when thinking about their next buy. After the boom in 2022/2023, when cheap electric cars were imported en masse from China, excitement has subsided. The urban population with above-average incomes who wanted and could afford an electric car, have already purchased it; for the rest these cars are just too expensive, far too impractical, far too unfamiliar. Car dealers are now focusing on hybrid models instead, which could serve as a transitional solution. Yet even these are no option for the majority of the population, given the current state of infrastructure in Kazakhstan.

Clean energy: only a fraction in the market

It is not that Kazakhstan produces no clean energy at all.

Hydroelectric power plants, however, play only a minor role in the country’s energy mix — for understandable reasons. Most of them were built in the same era as the aging thermal power plants. Moreover, water resources are steadily dwindling, raising doubts about whether there will be enough water to sustain hydroelectric production in the coming years.

Read more on Novastan: Kazakhstan: Residents suffer from lack of water

Despite Kazakhstan’s favorable geographic conditions, solar and wind energy remain surprisingly underused. As of 2024, the country operated just 59 wind farms and 46 solar parks — a modest number given its vast, sparsely populated steppes that are ideally suited for renewable energy generation. The southern regions enjoy between 2,200 and 3,000 hours of sunshine per year — two to three times more than the United Kingdom. Kazakhstan also has excellent wind potential: average wind speeds of 5–6 m/s are common across most of the country, reaching up to 8.27 m/s in certain areas. Experts estimate Kazakhstan’s total wind energy potential at around 920 billion kWh per year.

Yet, this immense potential remains largely untapped. The main reason is economic. At current price levels, the clean energy sector is unattractive to private investors. Equipment must be imported at high cost, while the electricity produced can be sold for no more than seven pence per kilowatt hour, VAT included. For most households, retail prices are roughly half that. As a result, revenues barely cover maintenance, and the payback period for new projects is so long that, by the time investors see a return, much of the infrastructure is already outdated and in need of further investment.

It has long been evident that energy prices in Kazakhstan will have to rise to finance sector modernization and accelerate the shift toward green energy. The controversial new nuclear power plant will not be profitable otherwise: experts estimate that the price of nuclear power will be 12.5 pence per kilowatt hour in the first 15 years. Ultimately, however, it is sustainable energy that must take the lead. Sergei Agafonov, chairman of the Kazakh Association of Energy Suppliers, envisions an optimal energy mix in which renewables provide at least half of the demand, while nuclear power accounts for roughly the global average – projected to reach 12% by 2040. ‘Yes, renewable energies will have to dominate our energy balance over all other types of energy generation. The main thing is that we carry out this change carefully [..]’, said Agafonov in an interview with Orda.kz.

New turning point

The strategy for achieving carbon neutrality in 2060 contains neither an implementation plan, nor success indicators, nor any sanctions for failing to achieve the set targets. In 2017, it was already announced at the EXPO in Astana that the share of renewables should increase to 30% by 2030. As things stand, the quota is only 6.2%. This still shows a 4% increase over the last seven years, but the growth estimate was clearly far too optimistic. Just four years after the EXPO, the target value has been halved.

A scenario in which Kazakhstan fails to meet its 2060 targets remains entirely plausible. The Climate Action Tracker has voiced similar concerns, rating the country’s climate policies as ‘insufficient,’ noting that ‘emissions will continue to rise until at least 2035 under current policies.‘ The lack of genuine political will to tackle the issue is perhaps best illustrated by President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s abrupt change of stance. Speaking at a forum of the National Council for Science and Technology on September 26, Tokayev underscored the continued importance of coal and made a striking remark about climate change:

‘frankly, everything that is happening looks like a large-scale fraud.’

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The post Carbon neutral by 2060? Kazakhstan’s green pledge faces a reality check appeared first on Novastan English.

Snow leopards – an exclusively Asian species of large mammals of the cat family – live on the territory of 12 countries: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Mongolia, Russia, Nepal, Pakistan, Myanmar, Bhutan, India, China. With the help of modern technologies, scientists are monitoring snow leopards’ behaviour and lifestyle to increase knowledge about this rare species to guarantee their survival.

“It’s not that simple” – so begins the answer to any question about the protection and preservation of snow leopards as a species. Are snow leopards categorised as vulnerable or endangered species? What is the biggest threat to their survival and reproduction? What is the best and most effective way to protect them? It’s not that simple, experts invariably answer.

This vague formulation is due to two peculiarities of the snow leopards’ lifestyle that complicate the possibility of observation: they live in high-mountainous and hard-to-reach places for humans, and they regularly traverse an impressive territory in search of prey. Snow leopards are strictly territorial animals, with males maintaining and regularly making rounds of their hunting territories, which can reach up to 1000 km² in area. Cases when leopards encroached on the territory of another representative of the species of the same sex are very rare.

Although these animals need a large territory, a scientific report published in 2016 by the Swedish Institute of Agricultural Sciences confirmed that almost 40% of all protected areas in the snow leopard’s range are too small to support even one breeding pair of these endangered cats. Specialists are convinced that for the species to survive in the wild, it needs a range sufficient for free movement of at least 50 breeding females.

Surveillance methods

The availability of such data and its accuracy have become possible in the last few years thanks to the developing technologies of animal observation. Wildlife cameras produce fascinating videos and photographs of animals, as well as documenting every single individual captured in a photo. Previously, in addition to camera shots, scientists have collected animal faeces to study the DNA of snow leopards. But both types of observing and studying had their significant limitations: it was impossible to trace the range of the animal’s hunting area, to find out what and when snow leopards eat, and how long they nurture and raise their offspring.

This is where a revolutionary development – collars with GPS trackers – comes to the rescue. Several non-profit organisations and foundations have begun implementing this technology in stages. One of them, Snow Leopard Trust, with the help of partner organisations and specialists, has managed to put the collars on several snow leopards in Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia. They track some of the animals since 2006.

“With the help of information from the collars, we learnt in which territories the animals move. One female with a collar travelled a distance of 2,000 kilometres during the time we monitored her. We would never have been able to capture that kind of information with cameras alone. We can also see how long [snow leopard] stays in one area and how often it changes its den,” said Kuban Jumabai Uulu, Director of the Snow Leopard Trust in Kyrgyzstan.

How collars with GPS trackers work

“For us, the process of fixing a collar on an animal is a combination of skill and art,” notes Koustubh Sharma, Science and Conservation Director at the Snow Leopard Trust.

Snow Leopard Trust Senior Scientist, Dr. Örjan Johansson, is the undisputed leader among researchers involved in the implementation and development of this technology. At the origin of this ambitious research project to study the living conditions and survival of snow leopards, he has managed to collar more than 30 snow leopards in Mongolia since 2006. So far, it is the southern part of the Gobi Desert, located in Mongolia, that serves as the main area of the scientific study involving collared wild cats.

To collar the leopards, experts study the routes of a particular animal and place a trap in its path. Once the trap is triggered, a team of scientists travel to the location and sedate the animal with a safe sedative. During the time the leopard is unconscious, the scientists carefully check the animal for any injuries, put a collar on it, and collect DNA samples – blood and hair – for further study. If an animal is trapped with any injuries, it is released without a collar.

Read more on Novastan: Still under threat – snow leopards in Kyrgyzstan

The Snow Leopard Trust is particularly proud of the latest advances in collar design – the current version of the device has an automatic release system. 18-20 months after the collar is attached, it falls off the animal’s neck automatically without human intervention. While the collar is active, scientists receive new data about the animal’s location every five hours. This information allows them not only to trace the routes of movement but also to better study the behaviour and habits of the animal. For example, if scientists notice that the animal spends a significant amount of time in one place, it is likely that it has found prey and is dealing with it. As soon as the snow leopard leaves a given location, scientists examine the remains of the feast and determine by the bones which animal became the victim of the predator.

The researchers had to make sure that such an invasive approach to animal studies did not have a lasting negative impact on the wild cats themselves. To that end, before launching the tracker collar programme in the wild, the experts put the collars on snow leopards at Seattle’s Woodland Zoo. Careful assessment of the animals’ behaviour before, during and after the experiment showed that the collars did not affect the leopards. The same results were obtained after removing the collars from free-ranging snow leopards.

Captivity vs. Freedom

At the moment, about 3000 snow leopards are kept in zoos around the world. They are scientists’ last hope in the most tragic scenario.

“It is important to realise that despite loud claims that snow leopards are no longer an endangered species, such claims cannot be made with 100 per cent certainty. We still have no way of stating the exact number of snow leopards living in the wild. The interval between our estimates is considerable. We should also keep in mind that the number of snow leopards in the wild continues to decline,” explains Koustubh Sharma.

The situation is ambiguous with keeping animals in captivity as well. These are not ideal conditions, and in the history of the species, there has never been a single case when a snow leopard born in captivity was able to integrate into its intended life in the wild. But if the number of free-living individuals continues to fall and the population of wild snow leopards wanes, all hope will fall on captive-born animals. They are the key to the preservation of the species and a guarantee of its survival.

The main threats and the fight against them

The situation is not getting simpler in this matter. Snow leopards have many enemies: global warming and climate change, poachers, reducing numbers of prey, but also the local population sometimes can kill or seriously injure wild cats while defending their territory and livestock. There are also known cases when snow leopards have become collateral damage in the fight against rodents and wolves with pesticides in the predator’s habitat.

Read more on Novastan: Climate change could lead to ever more fluctuated temperatures in Central Asia

The Global Programme for the Conservation of Snow Leopards and their Ecosystems in Kazakhstan estimates that snow leopards are exposed to all the above threats. The biggest threat comes from poachers, revengeful shepherds and lawbreaking hunters. Also, despite the existing numerous international and national laws and environmental acts, snow leopards are globally threatened with extinction due to insufficient implementation of these legal documents. Human activities that encroach on snow leopards’ habitat, as well as contributing to climate change, are increasingly reducing the territory already insufficient for the species’ prolific survival.

Nevertheless, foundations and NGOs are not despairing. Depending on the most widespread threats to the species’ survival in a particular country, organisations are developing programmes to address them. For example, in remote regions of India and Pakistan, where herders often kill snow leopards to protect their livestock, the Snow Leopard Trust offers financial compensation for lost farm animals. In Kyrgyzstan, Kuban Jumabai Uuly’s team rewards park rangers for every poacher caught, and conducts information classes about snow leopards for children and families living next door to the animal’s habitat.

All countries participating in the Global Programme for the Conservation of Snow Leopards and their Ecosystems, and more than 20 animal rights organisations supported an initiative called PAWS (Population Assessment of Snow Leopards in the World). The project was presented during the International Forum on the Protection of Snow Leopards and its Ecosystems in Bishkek in 2017; its main goal is to gain the most accurate estimation of the population of snow leopards in the wild.

In the meantime, every person interested in the conservation of the species can contribute in one simple way: familiarising themselves with the realities of snow leopards’ lives. Lack of knowledge among the local population and those authorised by the authorities is also one of the serious factors negatively affecting the living conditions of snow leopards.

Photos: Snow Leopard Trust

Preview collage: Perizat Suleiman

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The post Saving Snow Leopards: how scientists fight for the survival of a species appeared first on Novastan English.

Urban spaces in Bishkek, including pedestrian areas and public transportation, remain uncomfortable for citizens, especially women, leaving them feeling vulnerable and insecure due to a lack of facilities, poor pedestrian infrastructure, and inadequate pathways. Urmat Karybaev, the head of the State Administration for Architecture and Urban Planning of Bishkek, announced the plan to build a cable car in the city. But this measure alone will not solve everything.

Officials have been promising to build a subway for many years – with no result

Despite the government’s attempts to bring more buses to the city, public transportation is struggling to handle the demand. City activists in the urban initiative Peshkom raise awareness about the pedestrian environment saying that during peak hours, when most people need to commute, the situation becomes even more challenging, with transportation services becoming completely overwhelmed. However, in one of the interviews for the local news outlet KaktusMedia, the deputy mayor of Bishkek Jyrgalbek Shamyraliev said that the construction of the subway is a very expensive and complex construction. The municipality has rejected the idea of building the subway in the city. Instead, they are considering transportation that will run on a cable road.

During the first Eurasian Symposium on Architecture, Urban Planning, and Design, ESAUD-2023 Urmat Karybaev, the head of the State Administration for Architecture and Urban Planning of Bishkek announced that they are planning to build a cable car network. Karybyev noted that the construction of a cable road is several times cheaper than the building of motorways or railways; it occupies a minimum of land areas; it does not require the construction of the associated infrastructure, and, in addition, it is an environmentally friendly and reliable mode of transport. Social media, however, took the words of Karybaev not seriously and reacted with jokes and memes.

Pedestrian areas in Bishkek

An urban expert in the urban initiative Peshkom, Anna Schumbria believes that Bishkek public spaces are primarily designed with the assumption that men will be the primary beneficiaries. This leaves women feeling vulnerable and insecure due to differences in how they perceive and experience urban spaces compared to men.

Women in Bishkek face various challenges in public spaces, including poor lighting and a lack of convenient public toilets. These obstacles limit women’s freedom of movement, particularly given the prevalence of dark streets in the city. Public toilets are designed with an equal number of cabins for men and women, despite the fact that women have different needs related to menstruation and pregnancy. This leads to longer queues for women’s toilets, and it is especially difficult for women who are usually responsible for children and have nowhere to leave them while using the facilities. These problems were raised during the “Tender City” by young activists during the urban conference in Bishkek.

“There’s a big problem with women’s toilets. For example, when they are designed into buildings, they have the same number of cabins for men and women. Although women have menstrual periods, they become pregnant and need more time to go to the toilet. But it is still not taken into account directly. Most of the time, the responsibility for the children lies with the woman. And when a woman with a baby comes to the toilet, she has nowhere to leave the baby.” – said an activist from Peshkom organization at the “Tender City” conference in October 2022.

Mothers also face uncomfortable situations while taking their babies for a walk due to a lack of facilities, poor pedestrian infrastructure, and inadequate pathways. ”It is extremely uncomfortable to use the city because you have to take a stroller by yourself all the time. The stroller is about 4 kg, and the baby is about 12 kg. Also, when you go underground, you have to carry all the stuff because the stairs are very straight and it is very dangerous since you can just fall with your baby and all the other stuff.” – shared one of the women in a survey.

Public transportation in Bishkek

Cholpon Turdalieva, a gender expert and professor at the American University of Central Asia shared her research experience in Bishkek transport mobility: “I think here the concept of safety in public spaces in Bishkek is also correlated with the social, educational, and family status of women… [I]f I conclude, it’s more dangerous than safe, but it also depends on these patterns as social status, educational background, and professional background.”

According to Turdalieva, in Bishkek, “marshrutkas” (minibuses) and buses frequently lack proper equipment, such as ramps or lifts, that would allow women with strollers to board with ease. This also presents an issue for other groups of people, such as people with disabilities. During rush hours the situation becomes even more challenging, with transportation services becoming completely overwhelmed. This creates an environment where passengers, especially young women, are at risk of being subjected to harassment and unwanted touching. These experiences are incredibly traumatic and have lasting effects on the mental health and well-being of the victims.

According to Anara, a 22 years old college student, (name was changed to keep respondent’s anonymity – edit.) she faces harassment in marshrutka on a daily basis. “We have a really bad transport system, especially marshrutkas. And especially in those marshrutkas, there is a lot of harassment and even violence against women. It happens all the time. We cannot do anything about it because they are almost always full and there is not enough space to stand far from each other, so that’s why men make excuses, saying that it is a tight place and I didn’t intend to touch you.”

Another respondent, a school teacher, shared her thoughts saying, “I think this is also related to upbringing, where girls are told not to draw attention to themselves, not to dress provocatively, not to provoke. Instead of saying that there should be no harassment from men’s side and no victim-blaming. I don’t know about now, but this idea was cultivated earlier in our minds that girls should dress in a way that doesn’t attract men’s attention.”

Cable car: the solution?

So can cable car solve the massive problem with the current transportation system in Bishkek? According to Urmat Karybaev, the head of the State Administration for Architecture and Urban Planning of Bishkek, cable cars are being called tourist transport, but in many cities they are already used for regular public transportation. One cable car can replace 2,000 cars and 100 buses to carry 3,000-4,000 passengers. However, the population remains sceptical: for many years, officials have been promising to act – first with the idea to build a subway, then – a monorail. These promises traditionally remain in words, and one of the main problems is still the deplorable situation on the roads of Bishkek.

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Since May 2023, the capital of Kazakhstan is suffering from a severe water crisis, as a result residents are now facing a shortage of drinking water. According to the government, across the country there are more than 600,000 Kazakhstanis that do not have access to drinking water. By 2050 the Republic of Kazakhstan may join the category of countries “in dire need of water.” President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has proposed holding an anti-crisis summit in Kazakhstan under the backing of the UN to solve the water problem.

According to the monitoring group “Energyprom” – migration influx, rapid population growth and large-scale construction in the capital of Kazakhstan has exceeded the available capacity of the pumping stations. Therefore, on March 28, 2023, the city water supply service “Astana Su Arnasy” resorted to introducing an hourly water schedule to citizens. On May 23, residents of a residential complex expressed their dissatisfaction due to the lack of water by blocking the road.

On June 10 the situation was resolved and authorities assured that the problem would be solved by the 30 of June as they are launching a new pumping and filtering system. Meanwhile the publication “KazTAG” reported that the water source for Astana is designed for only 500,000 people while the city has 1.3 million inhabitants. The mayor of Astana has connected the water shortage with the population growth and the active irrigation of agricultural land.

Aset Kaliyev, Directory of the Water Security Centre at the international scientific complex “Astana,” told “Inbusiness.kz,” that one of the causes of the water shortage in the capital was the failure of developers to follow the general plan for city construction, “Having departed from the general plan, in Astana, with the approval of officials, densification and infill construction began. In turn, the infill developments began to cut into existing neighbourhoods, which already had their own load on the engineering networks. Since then, everything went “crooked and tangled”.

According to Nursultan Kerimkulov, head of the Water Supply and Sanitation Department, the lack of water will affect the development of construction in the city, but the quality of drinking water will not be affected.

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On April 19, 2023, at a meeting on socio-economic development of the country President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev noted, that by 2050 Kazakhstan may enter the category of countries in dire need of water. The President said that the infrastructure of large cities is not able to meet the increasing demand each year.

“Even in Astana itself, there has begun to be a shortage of water. One of the main reasons is the increase in construction. If we are not frugal, we will not be able to eliminate the deficit, even if we launch new facilities that provide clean water,” Kassym-Jomart Tokayev was quoted by the Kazakhstani news outlet “Tengrinews.”

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The problem of water shortages in Astana is not only related to the lack of design capacity of networks and pumping stations, but also to the direct shortage of water sources. Apart from the Astana reservoir, there are no alternative water supply options. Currently, the Ministry of Ecology of Kazakhstan is considering several options to solve the problem: construction of facilities to replenish the reservoir, laying a water pipeline and taking water from the Irtysh-Karaganda water canal.

The crisis of water scarcity in the cities and provinces of Kazakhstan will only get worse

According to the deputy director of public utilities of Kazakhstan, the provision of centralized water supply in Kazakhstan in 2022 was 96.8%. At the same time, more than 600,000 people, meaning the remaining 3.2%, are in need of drinking water.

Experts draw attention to bureaucratic complications that arise between government agencies at different levels and hinder the timely resolution of problems. For example, the government’s Geology Committee is responsible for water resources in Kazakhstan, while the Water Resources Committee controls pipeline infrastructure. Other local executive bodies manage network design and construction. However, not every region does the necessary work without delays. Marat Karabayev, Minister of Industry and Infrastructure Development of Kazakhstan, made a statement at a recent government meeting.

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The water sector also faces significant problems of deterioration of main pipelines and urban water pipelines. Overall, the degree of wear and tear on the country’s water supply networks is 43%. However, this figure does not reflect the scale of problematic networks in all regions. The highest level of infrastructure wear is seen in Almaty (58%), East Kazakhstan (54%), Akmola (52%), Abay (51%) regions and Almaty region (57%). In contrast, Atyrau region boasts the lowest level of pipeline wear and tear – 29%.

In 2023, a significant budget of 544 million Euros was allocated by the authorities for the construction and reconstruction of water supply and sewerage systems throughout Kazakhstan. The government of Kazakhstan plans to provide water to 1,395 villages and 25 cities that do not have full access to water by 2025.

Summit in Kazakhstan with back from the UN to solve the water problems

On June 8 and 9, 2023, the Astana International Forum was held in the capital, which was attended by the President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and the heads of several other states, including the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani and President of Kyrgyzstan Sadyr Japarov. At the meeting, the President of Kazakhstan proposed to hold a regional climate summit in Kazakhstan in 2026, under the supervision of the UN and other international organizations.

“Our country offers tremendous opportunities for a green economy and become a centre for renewable energy. However, time is not on our side. To decarbonize and create a green economy at the necessary speed, we need resources and partnerships,” the official website of the head of state “Akorda” quotes Tokayev’s proposal.

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To prevent an environmental catastrophe in the region, the country is calling for increased international support for the Aral Sea Rescue Fund.

“The problem of water and climate change are closely linked. Central Asia is a region where water security can only be achieved through close cooperation and effectively selected joint measures,” concluded the President.

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In the far north of Kyrgyzstan’s capital Bishkek, waste piles up every day in what residents call the polygon, a chaotically managed municipal landfill. Men and women work in this heap of plastic and toxic fumes, totally invisible to the general public. Through their initiatives, activists and artists are trying to give these people a voice and dignity.

Called the polygon, the hill, or simply the dump, the landfill located about ten kilometres from the city centre of Bishkek has been the subject of debate in Kyrgyzstan for many years. This huge dump of about fifty hectares, which concentrates all the capital’s waste, has created an array of political, economic, ecological scandals over the years.

Although a new landfill has been promised since 2013 by the municipality, it has still not been built. This is despite a large loan of 11 million Euros from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, already paid to the state. Since then, the polygon affair has been a regular topic in the Kyrgyz media: almost every few months, new episodes in the administrative soap opera take place, with the date of the landfill’s construction being postponed once again.

Conflicts of interest between the municipality and private companies have also been revealed. The landfill is on private land, and recently a Czech company was chosen to operate the waste without any prior tender.

The invisible workers

The polygon thus symbolises the lack of an effective waste management policy in Kyrgyzstan. But behind this admission of failure, people continue to live in the waste and make a living from it by collecting what they can sell to private recycling companies or intermediaries. The number of people working in the landfill is still unknown, but journalists estimate that it is over 500.

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Several activists and artists have taken up the cause and are raising the issue of the landfill from a human perspective, launching social and artistic initiatives to raise awareness of the parallel world where society’s waste is collected.

A “hill society” with a thousand stories.

Next to being a municipal dump, the polygon is the workplace of hundreds of men and women. The landfill has its official employees, but also illegal workers, because the site is not fenced off and anyone can enter. Poor and precarious people spend their day collecting certain types of waste and reselling them. Some have been engaging in this work for decades.

At the entry point, located at the road that leads the trucks and tractors to the dump field, a surveillance post is occupied by a single man. Opposite him, a dozen people, sitting on cardboard boxes, gather their days’ worth of waste in large plastic bags. For Lina Tsrimova, director of the documentary La Colline, which was released in 2022, this place is a real society, with its own hierarchy and organisation. “These people are generally very stigmatised in society,” explains the director, adding that “many of them hide the fact that they work there from their families.”

In this documentary film, selected for the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, extraordinary stories are intertwined. “Many of the new arrivals, mainly from the south of the country, are internal migrants,” explains the landfill’s guard. Due to the lack of jobs, they end up working here, sorting and collecting waste. The documentary particularly focuses on the story of Alexander, a former Russian soldier who fought in Chechnya before working at the dump. The approach of the two directors’, Tsrimova and her colleague Denis Gheerbrant, was to give a voice to these workers, allowing them to tell their stories.

More recently, in 2023, the eco-activist association Move Green set itself the task of making one of these invisible workers visible: Tajikane, 63, lives in the village of Altyn-Kazyk and has been sorting rubbish there for 17 years. She says she moved from the Batken region after the death of five of her children, and has no other choice to earn a living than sorting rubbish.

The neighbours of the landfill in daily contact with the pollution and waste

According to Gheerbrant, the place is an exceptional and visually strong space. Indeed, fires regularly break out on the waste heaps and the toxic fumes that emanate from them give the polygon an apocalyptic atmosphere. Additionally, the area is constantly covered by swarms of crows looking for food and trampled by stray dogs.

In several places on the site there are tents and huts built from debris found in the dump. Houses are located nearby, purchased at an attractive price, in the village of Altyn-Kazyk.

Last December, the Ministry of Ecology stated that “liquid toxic substances are accumulating in the northern part of the dump. A lake has formed there. In recent years, its size has increased five to six times. The toxic substances are getting into the groundwater.”

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Farida is one of the invisible workers, living in the village next to the polygon, on the road leading to the dump, about a hundred metres from it. The woman in her forties has neither a swing nor a toy for her son, only piles of empty plastic bottles, cans, tyres, and glass jars by the hundreds. Every day, trucks from the municipal waste collection service or other individuals and private organisations come to her to bring back these stocks of recyclable waste, which she stores and then resells.

Social and artistic initiatives

To help find solutions for the people living near the landfill, artists and activists are organising the Eco Trash festival with the primary aim to raise awareness. Created by the Bishkek School of Contemporary Arts (BiSCA) collective and the Tazar Association, the festival allows local and international artists to present their projects and initiatives. Last October, one of the themes on which the festival focused was the pollution of the Ala-Archa.

One of the people behind the festival is Bermet Borubaeva, an environmental activist in Bishkek and co-founder of BiSCA. She had the idea of building a library for the children of Altyn-Kazyk. Schoolchildren are among the first to be affected by the presence of the polygon next to their houses: many of them work collecting waste instead of going to school.

“This is the only place where children can read books here,” says Borubaeva. “It is also to give them more cultural and social opportunities in life.”

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