Regional Cooperative Disaster Risk Management in Central Asian Borderlands

ABSTRACT

This paper examines regional cooperation in disaster risk management (DRM) in the transboundary regions of five Central Asian states: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Regional cooperation to reduce disaster potential is a rather recent endeavour both internationally and in the region. Cooperation to enhance environmental security in post-Soviet Central Asia is slowly strengthening monitoring, planning, and prevention of natural disasters with a new approach that anticipates risks and hazards and seeks to reduce the likelihood of disasters instead of responding to the aftermath. Empowerment of regional associations to coordinate states’ activities to understand and solve common problems is needed. The legacy of the Soviet past and the contemporary states’ efforts to participate in regional cooperative organizations are reviewed and the prospects for new instruments for DRM cooperation are discussed. The needs are multifaceted and complex, but there are glimmers of promise for regional and borderland cooperation.

KEYWORDS:

• Borderland cooperation
• disaster risk management
• former Soviet Union states
• Central Asia
• transboundary issues

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).