On August 31, leaders from 10 countries gathered in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s (SCO’s) 26th summit. Among them were some of the world’s biggest power players: China’s Xi Jinping, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and India’s Narendra Modi. One topic of discussion: the great masses of ice that stretch from the Tien Shan and the Pamirs to the Himalayas. This region is something governments are discussing at broader political summits, citing in U.N. resolutions and, increasingly, fighting over.
Often called the Third Pole, the Hindu Kush Himalaya region holds more ice mass than anywhere on Earth, besides the North and South poles, and the region is experiencing the impacts of climate change. SCO’s meeting took place just five days after a glacier collapse on the Nepal-China border sent a torrent of water and debris down two river basins, resulting in 1,200 deaths and thousands more declared missing. Entire villages along the Trishuli River were buried in sludge. The disaster had impacts across national borders: Chinese building crews working on roads and infrastructure across the border in Kerung, Tibet, were trapped in the debris.
When it was initially formed in 2001, the main focus of the SCO was counterterrorism and border security, but climate is becoming a hot topic at these forums. Over the years, the grouping has discussed energy, climate change and environmental protection as well. While it remains unclear whether these discussions will lead to joint action or formation of a separate body to monitor glaciers, the discussion on glaciers itself is a key development.
“The fact that they are at the table talking about this in a non-Western setting is the value [of these conversations]. I don’t buy into this [belief that] you have to have this particular treaty, supranational body or binding regulation for it to be meaningful,” said Alexander Cooley, Claire Tow professor of political science at Barnard College, on the significance of glaciers emerging as a talking point.
Within Central Asia, individual national interests have also driven water politics. Explaining how this could affect consensus building, Cooley said, “Just on climate, they have fundamentally different agendas. Some are mountainous countries, some are upstream, some are downstream, some are drought-ridden. That is going to make consensus really difficult.”
Central Asia has been a witness to unresolved issues between upstream dam ambitions and downstream dependence. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan sit at the headwaters of the Syr Darya and Amu Darya rivers and have each long pursued major hydropower dams. For example, Kyrgyzstan’s Kambarata-1 and Tajikistan’s Rogun, at up to 335 meters, are designed to be among the tallest dams in the world. Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan sit downstream, dependent on the same rivers for irrigation, and have opposed upstream dam-building for decades. In September 2012, the late Uzbek president Islam Karimov warned that disputes over transboundary water resources in Central Asia “could spark not simply serious confrontation but even wars.” Since then, Uzbekistan-Tajikistan relations have warmed, Cooley argued, because there is “a lot more bottom-up cooperation from the Central Asians themselves as opposed to trying to manage the expectations of these external patrons who want them all to cooperate in their regional scheme.” But the structural disagreement over who controls the water has never been resolved.
A similar dynamic has played out between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, over the long-stalled Kambarata dam project on the Naryn River—waters that feed the Syr Darya and, with it, Uzbekistan’s cotton and rice industries. As a water resources researcher from Kazakhstan affiliated with the Columbia Climate School recalled, “During the previous presidency of Uzbekistan, they banned the development of the project,” on the grounds that it “would make the scarce waters of Syr Darya River… even more scarce.” That standoff is entangled with older grievances that have little to do with water at all: enclaves of Uzbek and Kyrgyz populations left stranded on the wrong side of Soviet-era borders. “There’s a place where there are many Uzbek people in Kyrgyzstan and there are many Kyrgyz people in Uzbekistan,” she said, “and territorial issues are adding up to water resources issues.” Relations have improved under Uzbekistan’s current president, who “has really taken a turn towards diplomacy,” she added.
Accelerating glacier melt makes all these disputes worse and occurs on a timeline that does not fit neatly into celebratory declarations. For now, the water is scarcer and dependent on spring and early summer snowmelt. Retreating glaciers can temporarily boost river flow, or what researchers call “peak water.” Once that ice is gone, flow declines and becomes far less predictable season to season, stripping away the relative stability that both downstream agriculture and upstream hydropower planning have counted on. A U.N. resolution honoring glacier preservation, or a thematic document at an SCO summit, does nothing by itself to decide who gets how much water from a shrinking and increasingly erratic source—or to prevent a glacial lake from bursting in a country that remains one of the smallest contributors to global warming.
Preservation declarations and U.N. resolutions are comparatively uncomplicated, but negotiating who actually gets the water—between five Central Asian states with competing energy and agricultural needs, or between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, or between China and everyone downstream of it—is extremely complex, and there is little evidence any current venue is doing that work. Whether the bloc could ever present a unified front on the issue at a forum like COP is itself contested.
Experts are skeptical. “As with other major issues, the SCO is unlikely to adopt meaningful and binding common policies on energy, climate or environmental issues. Their interests are too far apart, and the strongest members want to preserve their freedom of action,” said Matthew Waxman, Liviu Librescu professor of law at Columbia Law School, and an affiliate of the AC4, a research initiative of the Columbia Climate School. While he expected the countries to come up with general principles on how to treat climate and environment issues, he said “bilateral transactions and arrangements among SCO members, for example around energy supply and technology” were more likely. “When it comes to climate and the environment, the SCO will remain more of a convening platform that may work for legitimate national policies than an effective, collective policymaking body,” he said.