The Awakening of Central Asia
Johannes LinnThe international interest in the development of Central Asia increased sharply during the last two decades. Johannes Linn identifies in his article “Central Asia: A New Hub of Global Integration” the main reasons for this renewed attention: the geopolitical position of the Central Asian countries, the potential of Central Asia as a transit hub for Eurasian trade and capital flow, the extraction of extensive energy and mineral resources as well as the large and well-educated population.
According to Linn, Europe and the US share a common interest in a stable and economically prosperous development of Central Asia. Then again, there are diverging interests both between the different Central Asian countries – the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan – and among the international community. For instance, Russia pursues to maintain its transport monopoly and preferential access to Central Asia’s fossil fuel reserves, whereas Europe and the US would prefer a diversification of energy transport routes towards the West. Within Central Asia, countries compete for limited water resources to develop their hydropower infrastructure and to ensure the maintenance of the countries large irrigation systems.
Future potential and challenges
The potential payoff from boosting the non-energy sectors in Central Asia is remarkable according to a recent analysis of the Asian Development Bank and the UNDP. By improving the infrastructure and trade facilitation, the transport costs and times to major sea ports from Central Asia could be halved. Furthermore, the region’s GDP could be doubled. The author points out as the central challenge in achieving these goals the creation of coherent and efficient regional institutions that are strong enough to mediate between the different interests of the Central Asian countries.
Over the last 15 years a number of institutions – partly with overlapping membership and mandate – have been set up to promote the development of Central Asia, including the Eurasian Economic Community (EurasEC), the Eurasian Cooperation Organization (ECO), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation Program (CAREC) and the Special Program for the Economies of Central Asia (SPECA).
Key areas of progress
During October and November 2007 a number of conferences took place in Central Asia involving these institutions among others. Linn points out that this concentration of political activism needs to be understood as a reflection of the current intense interest in Central Asian regional development and cooperation. The Central Asian countries seem to begin to tighten their collaboration first among each other but also with key external players. In his paper, Linn highlights the four key dimensions of the observed progress:
- The focus of policymakers has shifted away from geopolitical and security concerns towards economic opportunities, e.g. fostering non-energy trade and transport development.
- The meetings represented not only a form of high level diplomacy, but also involved specific agreements on sectoral strategies, institutions and investments.
- There are growing links among different regional organizations – on October 4, 2006 the first meeting of the Secretariats of EurasEC, SCO, CAREC and SPECA took place in Istanbul.
- The CAREC ministers decided to explore the setting up of a Development Partners’ Forum which would bring together the different countries of Central Asia as well as their big neighbors and development partners, such as the EU, Germany or the US.
Overall, Linn identifies a strong tendency of Central Asian governments both working closer together with other administrations of the region as well as with neighbors and development partners. The first steps towards a flourishing economic development are taken, but much remains to be done to continue on that path.
The summary above was prepared by Maximilian Müngersdorff, a former member of the Atlantic Community editorial team, from a presentation by Johannes Linn: Central Asia as the hub of European Economic Integration — Implications for CAREC, available online here.
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