Central Asian States seek new voice after UN summit

Mevlut Katik 9/06/02

The United Nations' World Summit on Sustainable Development ended in Johannesburg on September 4 without a bold statement, after leaders from hundreds of countries tried to gather issues from ecology to development into a worldwide action plan. For all UN members, and for the fragile former Soviet republics in particular, the existence of such a conference reinforced a truth that drives policy. The upcoming anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the United States emphasizes the same truth: to survive and grow, countries must control risks from within and beyond their borders. Since the ideology that fueled the attacks and the natural resources that threaten the ecology are both abundant in Central Asia, the summit raises questions about how Central Asian republics can help the world assess and mitigate risks. Those questions are even harder to answer than the ones that came up in the summit.

Summit participants sought a formula through which poor nations like Uzbekistan and Tajikistan could achieve the living standards common in developed nations, without those nations' reliance on fossil fuels. More immediately, they sought to understand how chronic poverty inspires religious extremism and how extremism encourages terrorism. Participants often cited the Ferghana Valley, which runs through parts of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, a prime example of the sort of place where poverty can link to terrorism. To prevent terrorism, as to prevent environmental disaster and encourage growth, the heads of these states may have to move aggressively against the risks of letting poverty fester.

As many analysts in the past year have done, conference participants linked poverty to wider issues of democracy and human rights. Poverty-hit masses who live in undemocratic states cannot find any legal channels to express themselves democracy, and can come to see terrorist networks as the only agencies that can fight their own governments. Terrorist networks may encourage poor and politically repressed people to view violence as a form of dissent. When those networks reach international proportions, as al Qaeda has, they threaten democratic as well as autocratic states. So conference participants discussed ways to make poverty less stubborn. They established close links between citizens' wealth and the health of their environment. This logical path indicates why the conference could not produce any triumphal treaty. Even if countries committed themselves to democracy and sustainable growth, demented or homicidal terrorists would still be able to wreak havoc as long as they could find sympathizers to finance their work.

So Central Asian governments, facing desperately poor populations may have to provide economic incentives to steer citizens away from extremism. This would entail land reform, programs to wipe out corruption and clarify investment climates, establishing independent courts and ending political persecution. The summit declaration emphasizes that "democracy, the rule of law, respect for human rights and freedoms, and achievement of peace and security are essential for the full achievement of sustainable development. Together these objectives are indivisible and mutually reinforcing."

In Central Asia, selective use of legislation is common. To satisfy the spirit of the UN declaration and to discourage extremism from gaining political or financial strength, regional governments could bolster stability by streamlining the functions of the state apparatus and providing for multiparty democracy and pluralism.

Unfortunately, the region's economic strategy does not necessarily imply a need for swift political reform. The Johannesburg summit's failure to force hard targets for worldwide adoption of renewable fuels must have gladdened delegates from Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and other states that hope to reap profits from Caspian Basin energy exports. The region looks likely to provide oil and gas importers- including the US, India and China- with an alternative source of fossil fuels to keep the Persian Gulf states in check. Beyond the basin, Central Asia's potential for developing and exporting renewable energy seems modest at best. Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan have developed some hydropower facilities, but the Johannesburg summit ended up leaving hydropower outside the category of renewable energy. [For more information, see the Eurasia Insight archives.]

This semantic distinction hints at how remote an accord that could meaningfully include Central Asia remains. The call by the European Union to form a global coalition of "like-minded countries and regions" for solar and wind energy could motivate new alliances between Europe and countries without mature oil industries. It is undeniable, though, that Central Asia's poor citizens need more than renewable energy. Presidents in the region can cite their vast energy resources as pools of short-term growth. While they do, though, they risk contracting the so-called "Dutch disease," in which a country sinks its capital into a single resource at the expense of other sectors. As with the challenge of fighting poverty, each Central Asian economy must wring what economic benefit they can from their current system while steadily and visibly establishing a multifaceted, transparent and sustainable one to replace it.

The complexity of that task makes it likely that globalization, the process by which companies bring jobs and growth to foreign countries, will be part of any broad economic advance. Many analysts say that the summit's procedures and lack of ultimate unity reflects the clash of different paradigms of globalization. Interventionist representatives like the Europeans tussled with Americans, who often view globalization as an alternative to certain forms of regulation. Both the share and role of Central Asia in this process have yet to be defined. Globalization does not spell the end of geography and ethnicity yet, and Central Asian republics will need to respect ethnic and historic interests in order to build stability. Yet the globalization of terrorism makes Central Asian presidents fearful rather than hopeful, and articulates international relations in terms of security. The summit offered no formula for reconciling security with sustainability and democracy. The need for more thought and debate on that crucial challenge will undoubtedly give Central Asia a more prominent voice in future summits.

Editor's Note: Mevlut Katik is a London-based journalist and analyst. He is a former BBC correspondent and also worked for The Economist group.

Posted September 6, 2002 © Eurasianet