‍Central Asia and The Caucasus Journal

Abstract A healthy environment is one of the fundamental pillars of sustainable development, but rapid population growth, industrialization, and excessive exploitation of natural resources, especially water resources, have jeopardized the fragile ecological balance in many regions of the world. As an arid and semi-arid region, Central Asia faced serious environmental problems during its economic reconstruction after the collapse of the Soviet Union, including the drying up of the Aral Sea, increasing industrial pollution, and political tensions resulting from the uncoordinated management of shared water resources. This research aims to examine the environmental situation and sustainable development challenges in Central Asian countries since independence. It attempts to analyze the trend of environmental crises and reveal the necessity of regional cooperation and joint resource management. The central question of the research is how the environmental situation of Central Asia can be explained, given the scarcity of water and the shared exploitation of water resources. The research hypothesis is that the uncoordinated use of natural resources, especially the water resources of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya basins, has been one of the main factors in the emergence of environmental crises and a fundamental obstacle to achieving sustainable development. The research method is descriptive-analytical and is structured within the framework of Thomas Springs' four-stage methodology. The findings show that water resource scarcity, industrial pollution, soil erosion, and climate change threaten the environmental sustainability of region, and only through international cooperation and joint institution-building can the path to sustainable development in Central Asia be strengthened.

Abstract The discovery of Oil, Gas, and its diverse utilization has had a major role in the transformation of industries, and acknowledged as a central basis for social development. In these conditions, future of energy resources and how to organize it's production, transportation and usage have been the major goals and challenges of the producers and consumers of energy; it has also helped to shape bilateral, regional and international relationships between countries. In the past decade, the energy security has caused the increasing of strategic importance in relations between producing, consuming and transit routes. Among regions blessed with energy resources, the Caspian and Caucasian regions have a major part in providing the energy needed on a global basis, and it is possible to increase this part by encouraging regional cooperation. This article, basing on energy resources and regional cooperation, proposes the following theory: after the Georgian crisis in August 2008 and considering the changes in global and regional processes, new conditions have aroused in Caucasus, that its major component is the weakening of contrasting and competitive approaches and strengthening the cooperative and transactional approaches. On such basis and with regard to the changing views of regional countries’ leaders, the concept of energy can be considered an appropriate groundwork in creating ties between the producing, transporting and consuming countries. This article claims that the realization of this matter is only possible by the adoption of an appropriate policy regarding regional cooperation in order to better utilize the resources and by giving utmost priority to long-term goals as opposed to short-term goals.