Climate Change Driving Conflicts over Exclaves and Enclaves in Central Asia, Dadabayeva Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 29 – Climate change is leading to ever more water shortages across Central Asia, and those shortages in turn have become ever more important drivers of conflict among the countries of that region over the 30 remaining exclaves and enclaves there, Zarina Dadabayeva says.

            In a new article, the senior scholar at the Moscow Institute of Economics argues that there are few prospects the climate and water situations will improve and thus there are more than such conflicts will become more frequent however much the leaders of these countries may want to avoid them.

            Dadabayeva lays out her argument in “Climate Changes and Water Problems of Central Asia in the 21^st Century: Risks of Disintegration,” Geonomika Energetiki 2(2023): 100-119 (in Russian; full text available at geoenergy-journal.ru/wp-content/uploads/Geo-03-2023_forRSL.pdf).

            Climate change and the inability of the countries of the region to agree on sharing water or modernizing their agricultural sectors to reduce waste means that there will be more dust storms, more drought, and more migration out of rural areas, and all these things will become mixed with the issue of borders and especially that of the exclaves and enclaves there.