Official Uzbek Green Group Needs More Even-Handed Approach

Over the past few months, members of Uzbekistan’s Ecological Movement have focused on staging protests against the TALCO aluminium plant, located in the town of Tursunzade just inside neighbouring Tajikistan. 

The environmental group is concerned about emissions from the Tajik plant, and especially about plans to boost aluminium production there, which will inevitably worsen the impact on human health and the environment in Uzbekistan’s Surkhandarya province. They say the incidence of disease is rising among the 580,000 people living in the surrounding region, and flora and fauna are also being harmed.

Since late March, the Ecological Movement, together with students and community members, has been staging protests and appealing to the United Nations General Assembly and other international organisations to intervene.

On May 12, the group published a statement on its website publicising its activities to date, noting that its concerns had been aired in over 140 programmes and reports on Uzbek television, around 150 on the radio, and dozens of articles in national and local newspapers.

All this is undoubtedly praiseworthy, but the approach taken by these “environmental patriots” also raises some questions. Their choice of issue is selective, and they have signally failed to raise the alarm about domestic concerns of equal importance.

In the past three months, media reports and internet debates have highlighted the destruction of trees in the centre of the capital Tashkent.

On May 12, the central street Sayilgoh lost dozens of old trees, which were chopped down to make way for new office buildings. Prior to that, past and present residents of the city voiced concern on internet forums about the barbaric uprooting of trees in the park around the centrally-located Amir Temur Square.

There are numerous photos on the web showing the destruction of healthy plane trees, listed as an endangered species in Uzbekistan. And this in a region where every tree adds value to the ecosystem.

It is odd that the Ecological Movement should have ignored these actions.

The movement was set up not long before last year’s parliamentary election, and had 15 seats in the legislature set aside for it. Its stated aims are to address problems of diminishing biodiversity, to get the public more engaged with environmental activities, and to improve the environmental situation.

Now that its members are in parliament, the Ecological Movement has acquired selective vision. The authorities seem to be using it as an instrument in the political confrontation with neighbouring countries, in this instance Tajikistan.

The head of one of very few environmental groups that exist in Uzbekistan has described the Ecological Movement as “the product of the government’s focused work to prevent people from organising themselves. He seems to be right. How otherwise can one explain the official blessing given to the protests it has staged? Such large demonstrations are generally impossible, or bring down serious consequences on those involved. This is, after all, a country where the authorities suppress political rights and freedoms and repress journalists and human rights activists.

The Ecological Movement’s existence provides the Uzbek government with political leverage in its engagement with western states. Including the group in the political process allows it to claim respectability by arguing that new parties are emerging. The authorities are probably also hoping that this non-government group will win favour in the international community, which has shown that it has little confidence in the Uzbek government itself.

Sergei Naumov is an independent expert on media and civil society development from Khorezm province in northern Uzbekistan.

This article was produced as part of IWPR’s News Briefing Central Asia output, funded by the National Endowment for Democracy.