Crossroads Asia | Economy | Central Asia

Climate Change and the Future of Central Asia-South Asia Connectivity 

The region’s ambitious connectivity and energy projects were conceived in a different climatic reality.

At the 64th session of the U.N. climate framework (UNFCCC) subsidiary bodies (SB64) in Bonn, Germany, which is running June 8-18, India – alongside a host of international groupings spanning the ideological spectrum – has called for direct action on a widening gap in climate-relevant funding. Whether any concrete outcomes will emerge from the ongoing meeting is so far unclear. Nevertheless, thousands of kilometers to the east, in Central as well as South Asia, the consequences of inaction are significant, not just for climate mitigation and adaptation goals of the regions’ countries, but also for the ambitious regional connectivity projects between the two. 

The Hindu Kush Himalaya region, which stretches across Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, and Pakistan, is arguably the epicenter of the climate emergency confronting both Central and South Asia. According to estimates, glaciers across the 3,500-kilometer arc, also known as the Third Pole, are retreating 65 percent faster than in the previous decade. Ten major river basins originate from the region. The glacier melt can potentially threaten the water supply for nearly 2 billion people across all eight countries. The region has already recorded a 23-year low in snow persistence for the third consecutive year. In 2025, for instance, the Indus river basin ran 16 percent below normal and some eastern river basins are facing deficits of up to 50 percent.

In Central Asia, there is a different crisis, involving a dearth of water. Over the past 70 years, the region has already warmed by 1.2 degrees C, which has led to a 20 percent decline in snow depth. Projected temperature rise of 2-6 degrees C by century’s end threatens to intensify droughts and land degradation. Already, 2024 saw the region’s worst flooding in over 70 years, even as the Western Himalayas, eastern Iran, and parts of Afghanistan experienced below-normal precipitation. This pattern of extremes can become more frequent. 

Against this backdrop, I participated in the second Termez Dialogue, held on June 4-6 in Uzbekistan. The primary theme of the event was connectivity between Central and South Asia, with an additional focus on climate change and environmental resilience related to the ambitious regional connectivity projects. The dialogue also highlighted a growing recognition that connectivity and climate adaptation must be seen as intertwined agendas. The discussion emphasized that Afghanistan plays a crucial role as a strategic link between Central and South Asia. Therefore, it is essential to integrate Afghanistan into regional climate adaptation frameworks and conversations to ensure both environmental security and physical connectivity.

The dialogue is part of Uzbekistan’s urgent exploration of the possibilities for implementing several major infrastructure projects linking Central and South Asia, most of which run through Afghanistan. Apart from the bottlenecks posed by regional rivalries, there is also a realization that projects such as CASA-1000, the INSTC, and the TAPI pipeline, all still in their incipient stages of implementation despite being under discussion for decades, were conceptualized on environmental assumptions that climate change seems on the verge of now to be undermining.

Take, for instance, the curious case of the Central Asia-South Asia (CASA-1000) project, originally conceptualized as far back as 2008. The logic of this $1.2 billion power transmission effort, designed to carry surplus hydroelectricity from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to Afghanistan and Pakistan, rests on the existence of surplus glacial and snowmelt-fed hydropower in the summer months. If projections of continuing glacial retreat, as well as consequent peaking river flows followed by declines after 2050, hold, those surpluses could disappear entirely. Unless climate resilience is inbuilt into the project, as the World Bank clearly underlines, hydropower generation can undergo significant disruption, driving the project into........

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