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Abstract
This paper deals with the strategies of households living in a peripheral high-mountain region in order to cope with the post-Soviet energy crisis. The Soviet modernization project failed at connecting the region to the grid, and imported coal for heating and fuel for producing electric energy at high costs over long distances. After the collapse of this alimentation system, people have substituted energy demands with wood and shrubs, and used increasingly available low-cost Chinese solar equipment to produce electrical energy. International development actors have failed to increase acceptance for energy efficiency technologies. Despite the Pamirs' high potential for solar and wind energy and decreasing installation costs, Soviet-style state planning of energy infrastructure still favours big hydropower stations, despite their high (social) costs and the limited potential on the Pamir plateau. The paper will discuss bottom-up effects of household decisions and top-down strategies as potentials and obstacles for a sustainable energy supply in the Pamirs.
Acknowledgements
Permission to use data from household surveys conducted by Fanny Kreczi, Georg Hohberg and local assistants, as well as from climatic recordings by Harald Zandler, is highly appreciated. Many interview partners in Tajikistan supported the author's enquiries. All support by interlocutors, bureaucrats and development practitioners living and working in the Pamirs is gratefully acknowledged. Finally, the author thanks the anonymous reviewers for their constructive and helpful comments which substantially improved earlier drafts of this paper.
Funding
The author is grateful to the Volkswagen Foundation for making possible empirical research in the Pamirs by funding the research projects ‘Transformation Processes in the Eastern Pamirs of Tajikistan. Changing Land Use Practices, Possible Ecological Degradation and Sustainable Development’ from 2007 to 2010; and ‘Transformation Processes in the Eastern Pamirs of Tajikistan. The Presence and Future of Energy Resources in the Framework of Sustainable Development’ since 2012.
Notes
1 For a contrasting description of state policies and development organizations’ efforts towards electrification of certain populations or remote areas, see Chiovenda (2014) on the Hazara region in Afghanistan (in this issue).
2 Special thanks go to Kim Vanselow, who conducted field research from 2007 to 2009 jointly with the author as part of a completed interdisciplinary research project (see the Acknowledgements).
3 The troops of the Russian Federal Border Service were well supplied with coal and fuel. Local people often benefitted when soldiers sold misappropriated supplies at favourable prices (see also note 8 below).
4 Interview partners were: Adylbek Atabaev (AA), Murghab, 28 May 2008 (member of the local administration for many years, and former representative of Murghab district); and Teshebay Kolchokabev (TK), Murghab 5 April and 16 May 2009 (member of the administration for many years).
5 Transporting coal over long distances on road in large loads is comparably profitable and therefore less influenced by petrol prices.
6 Rooting out small shrubs yields no results for the harvesters: small plants have not developed considerable wooden parts, and even if they did they are too small to be bound in a bundle, which is the typical load unit. Concerning medium plants, harvesters usually ponder the physically hard work of rooting out a specific plant against the expected yield of wood.
7 This is being done within the ongoing interdisciplinary research project (see the Acknowledgements) which soon will yield results in more detail.
8 The former Soviet border troops continued to control the international borders of the Eastern Pamirs with China and Afghanistan under the command of the Russian Federal Border Service based on a agreement between Tajikistan and Russia until 2003. Their presence had a considerable impact on the local economy. Many local people were hired as contracted border guards, as well as civilians. In this way, 20–30% of the Murghab households benefitted from the extraordinary high salary for local standards. Furthermore, many products were purchased by the affluent Russian border guards from the local market. Additionally, the troops were well supplied with coal and fuel. A considerable share of support consisted in supplies originally intended for the Russian border forces, but sold by soldiers for their own account.
9 The energy tariffs of Pamir Energy are part of the concession agreement with the government of the Republic of Tajikistan and are higher (approximately 3.0 US-ct/kWh) then those of Barqi Tojik (2.4 US-ct/kWh).
10 Climatic data are recorded by a research group of the ongoing interdisciplinary research project; first results were presented by Zandler and Samimi (Citation2014) (see the Acknowledgements).
11 Each of them with an approximate size of 1 m2, operating with an efficiency of 15% and delivering 150 W peak. The costs of the components of such a solar system would be about €600.
12 In recent years some development organizations operating in the region designed programmes to foster investments in improved insulation of houses and the efficiency of stoves (cf. Wiedemann et al. Citation2012).