Climate change is likely to pose additional and significant risks to economic activity, human welfare and the environment in Tajikistan, according to a new report by the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
“In Tajikistan, higher temperatures and changes in precipitation patterns have led to retreat of small glaciers, and significantly reduced water flow is expected in many rivers over the mid-to-long term,” says the new study titled “Addressing Climate Change and Migration in Asia and the Pacific.”
“Climate modeling predicts that constantly increasing temperatures may further shift the existing pattern of glacial volume, thereby causing widespread decline in water availability by more than 30 percent,” says the 85-page report.
The study warns that Tajikistan is a potentionally high-risk country due to the projected climate change. “About 95 percent of the country is vulnerable to environmental degradation, including floods, mudslides, salinity, water and soil erosion, and desertification”.
Having noted that “rural–urban migration has led to an increase in the population living in and around the capital Dushanbe” and “tens of thousands of people emigrate each year to seek work in Germany, Russian Federation, and other Central Asian countries,” the report predicts climate change will also become one of the major factors that would influence migration trends in Tajikistan in the near future.
“Water shortages can be expected to stimulate outward migration from affected areas,” the study says stressing the need to conduct further research into the interaction between the environment and migration.
“ADB is releasing this report out of recognition that climate induced migration is becoming an important challenge in the Asia Pacific region. Since January 2010, more than 42 million people have been displaced by extreme environmental events,” Bart Edes, Director of the Regional and Sustainable Development Department at ADB, said in a statement to mark the release of the report. “The fact that we see people displaced now and many of them becoming migrants gives us a taste of what’s to come as climate change begins to have a greater impact in a way of more extreme weather events as well as slow onset in environmental change.”
“We are releasing this report to present governments with policy options, with actions that they can take to address this challenge and to turn migration — climate induced migration — from a threat to an opportunity,” Edes said adding that by “strengthening disaster risk management” and targeted “disaster management investments” governments would be able to reduce the negative impact of the climate change.
In a separate study released last month, ADB provided additional details into Tajikistan’s vulnerability to climate change.
“Tajikistan is one of the most vulnerable countries to the adverse effects of climate change in Central Asia,” says the 18-page report titled “Republic of Tajikistan: Building Capacity for Climate Resilience.” The report is based on findings from a research conducted jointly by ADB and the Government of Tajikistan.
Unless urgent measures are taken to help government of Tajikistan address the challenge of climate induced vulnerabilities, “projected rise in temperature of up to 2 degrees Celsius by 2050 will result in glacial melt and early snow-melt leading to changes in the seasonality of runoff and impacts on stable water supplies for agriculture, hydropower and human consumption,” the study warns.
“Increased frequency of droughts, catastrophic flooding due to glacial lake outbursts, destabilizations of mountain slopes and more landslides will lead to a progressive increase in economic losses and risk to the population, and reduce the ability of communities to move out of poverty. These adverse effects will be compounded by a projected 67 percent population growth over the 21st century and will exacerbate underlying socio-economic and environmental constraints,” the report says adding that due its high vulnerability Tajikistan was chosen as one of the nine participating countries to the Pilot Program for Climate Resilience (PPCR) funded by the ADB Strategic Climate Fund.
One of the PPCR projects is currently under way on the Pyanj River on the Tajik Afghan border. The Pyanj basin is over a thousand kilometers long and covers an area of over 100,000 square kilometers. More than 300,000 people live in the Pyanj Valley prone to frequent floods resulting from rapidly melting glaciers in the mountains. With a grant of $15 million, ADB helps manage the floods by building dams and dykes on the Pyanj River and helps people prepare for danger by improving forecasting and providing early warning systems. Another PPCR project with an estimated cost of $75 million will introduce climate resilience measures during the rehabilitation of the Kairakkum hydropower plant on the Syr Darya River in Sogd region in northern Tajikistan.
