CHAPTER 8: ENERGY COOPERATION AND SECURITY IN CENTRAL ASIA: THE POSSIBLE SYNERGY BETWEEN HYDROCARBON-RICH AND WATER-RICH COUNTRIES
This research was supported by a grant-in-aid from the JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP16KT0044, Waseda University grant-in-aid 2018B-312, and Waseda University grant-inaid 2018K-388.
The chapter centers on the energy policies of two Central Asian member countries of CAREC — Kazakhstan and the Kyrgyz Republic. Such a focus enables comprehension of the pertinent issues in energy security for this entire region. The two nations have dissimilar energy profiles, and thus each serves a representative of a respective group. The first group is formed by the Central Asian countries who are amply endowed with hydrocarbon resources, but poor in hydropower resources (Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan). The second group is made up of the Central Asian countries who are richly endowed with hydro resources but deprived of hydrocarbon resources (the Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan). Despite these two groups reveal complementary characteristic in terms of resource endowment, which suggests a case for synergy, reality differs from such a rational setting. The chapter analyzes the problems that the groups’ representatives, Kazakhstan and the Kyrgyz Republic, encounter in the realm of energy security. A comparative analysis of the respective nations’ uncoordinated energy policies is presented. It is argued that the national energy security of an individual Central Asian state is inseparable from energy security of the entire Central Asian region because it is embedded into a broader regional context of resource sharing and nexus thinking. The dimensions for regional and international cooperation toward enhanced energy security in Central Asia are discussed.
