Everyday Energy Politics in Central Asia and the Caucasus

Citizens' Needs, Entitlements and Struggles for Access

David Gullette, Jeanne Féaux de la Croix

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138097278
• eBook ISBN: 9781317302520
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The perception of Central Asia and its place in the world has come to be shaped by its large oil and gas reserves. Literature on energy in the region has thus largely focused on related geopolitical issues and national policies. However, little is known about citizens' needs within this broader context of commodities that connect the energy networks of China, Russia and the West. This multidisciplinary special issue brings together anthropologists, economists, geographers and political scientists to examine the role of all forms of energy (here: oil, gas, hydropower and solar power) and their products (especially electricity) in people's daily lives throughout Central Asia and the Caucasus. The papers in this issue ask how energy is understood as an everyday resource, as a necessity and a source of opportunity, a challenge or even as an indicator of exclusionary practices. We enquire into the role and views of energy sector workers, rural consumers and urban communities, and their experiences of energy companies' and national policies. We further examine the legacy of Soviet and more recent domestic energy policies, the environmental impact of energy use as well as the political impact of citizens' energy grievances.

This book was published as a special issue of Central Asian Survey.

Mr Light and people’s everyday energy struggles in Central Asia and the Caucasus: an introduction

David Gullette^a and Jeanne Féaux de la Croix^b

^aUniversity of Central Asia, Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic;
^bDepartment of Ethnology, Junior Research Group ‘Cultural History of Water in Central Asia’, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

The perception of Central Asia and its place in the world has come to be shaped by its large oil and gas reserves. Literature on energy in the region has thus largely focused on related geopolitical issues and national policies. However, little is known about citizens’ needs within this broader context of commodities that connect the energy networks of China, Russia and the West. This multidisciplinary special issue brings together anthropologists, economists, geographers and political scientists to examine the role of all forms of energy (here: oil, gas, hydropower and solar power) and their products (especially electricity) in people’s daily lives throughout Central Asia and the Caucasus. The papers in this issue ask how energy is understood as an everyday resource, as a necessity and a source of opportunity, a challenge or even as an indicator of exclusionary practices. We enquire into the role and views of energy sector workers, rural consumers and urban communities, and their experiences of energy companies’ and national policies. We further examine the legacy of Soviet and more recent domestic energy policies, the environmental of energy use as well as the political impact of citizens’ energy grievances.

Introduction

The 2010 film Svet-Ake, directed by Aktan Arym Kubat, poignantly illustrates the challenges people face in accessing electricity. In the small Kyrgyz village of Kok-Moinok, Mr Light connects homes to the electrical grid for those who cannot pay for it. He tinkers with a small wind turbine as an alternative future to their current infrastructure. He is loved by the villagers for his efforts, but is arrested by the police for stealing electricity. However, during the 2005 overthrow of President Askar Akaev’s government, his would-be persecutors are replaced and he is freed. At the same time, a young man from the area aspires to become a parliamentary deputy in the new government and is looking for the support of the villagers. He is a populist, giving hope to the community’s desire for development and prosperity. He brings in Chinese investors, but hosts them with the same extravagance and disregard for local sensibilities that had led to Akaev’s ousting. Mr Light is caught in the middle of this and his vision of accessible electricity remains unrealized. This fictional account highlights the struggles for energy that Central Asian citizens are faced with, the multiple actors involved at different levels in shaping the local energy economy, and how everyday energy needs, national policy-making and political events may influence each other.

The energy sector in Central Asia and the Caucasus presents great contrasts. It has massive oil and gas reserves, as well as large hydroelectric plants generating surplus capacity that can be exported to neighbouring countries. Yet, daily experiences indicate that fuel and electricity supply to citizens is fragile, dependent on a largely decrepit infrastructure and plagued by mismanagement and corruption. While some problems existed during the Soviet Union, the situation has been exacerbated by a number of changes. The Soviet system of integrated energy distribution networks has become more complicated between sovereign states that no longer have common agreements for sharing basic resources. Some countries, such as Uzbekistan, have withdrawn from these networks, which has caused energy deficits and affected neighbouring countries’ energy security. Furthermore, market reforms and privatization of strategic infrastructure has led to a change in pricing with a direct impact on businesses and citizens.

The provision of an extensive energy infrastructure and generating capacity in Central Asia was a great achievement of the Soviet Union, but this achievement is no longer matched by the reliability of services or adapted to citizen’s ability to pay for energy services. This is particularly the case since the lack of investment in many parts of the region after independence has led to further deterioration of the infrastructure. The decrepit domestic infrastructure contrasts sharply with people’s growing expectations, and continuing demands for energy security which are rooted in Soviet habits of subsidized access to utilities and the resulting perception of energy as a basic public good. These views go beyond the promises of benefits from large-scale projects such as big hydropower dams coming online. Policy-makers often do not address immediate concerns or explain changes for the future, and what this will mean for Central Asian citizens.

These bigger political and infrastructural issues have created a mismatch between public demands and policy decisions. The 2008/09 energy crisis in Kyrgyzstan is an example of the situation. Rolling blackouts around the capital Bishkek forced business owners to resort to purchasing generators to keep businesses open, while apartment blocks periodically turned into ghostly concrete and brick shells with wandering, flickering candles. In the following year, the continuing energy crisis and poorly devised government policies drove people to voice their demands in the streets for energy tariffs that met people’s ability to pay for them (see Wooden’s (2014) contribution in this issue on how this became a factor in the 2010 revolution). Residents in the town of Naryn protested at proposed price hikes, especially as winter in the high valleys of central Kyrgyzstan lasts for six months. Generators have now become part of the Bishkek cityscape as a kind of ‘insurance’. Although this cannot be a permanent solution, fundamental issues and how to address them are not a widely discussed topic, in part because this is politically sensitive, but also because the ‘stuff’ of energy and associated technologies and business models are poorly understood by the wider public. The lessons from the energy crisis have not been learnt and challenges are likely to repeat themselves in the winter of 2014/15 as there is an energy deficit due to a low rain cycle and mismanagement.

Tajikistan provides another example of people’s changing energy strategies in response to post-independence energy sector changes. In early 2008, prolonged cold spells increased people’s use of electricity for heating. At the time, Tajikistan limited industrial and commercial electricity use, and increased imports. However, in December 2009, Uzbekistan withdrew from the series of high-voltage lines and substations that connect Central Asian republics (United Energy System), severing their lines with Tajikistan, and so creating further energy shortages.¹ In addition, the Tajik Aluminium Company (TALCO) is a huge industrial consumer of electricity and is often seen as a contributor to the lack of electricity, particularly in the winter (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/The World Bank 2012). The additional cost of electricity usage in some rural areas has forced people to turn to alternative fuel sources. There were reports of higher incidents of tree cutting, putting some communities at greater risk of landslides and mudslides (OCHA 2008). In this issue, Tobias Kraudzun (2014) examines the choices available to Tajikistani citizens in the Eastern Pamir under such conditions, and examines the role of government and development agencies in supporting these choices – not necessarily to the best effect.²

The international dimensions of the exploitation of available energy resources, and currency receipts through its export as a basis for government power in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are well explored (Franke-Schwenk 2012; Kendall-Taylor 2012; Overland, Kjaernet, and Kendall-Taylor 2010; Najman, Pomfret and Raballand 2008). Yet the everyday consequences of these international dimensions and the conflicts over energy distribution have received much less attention. Despite the prominence of these issues, scholars have hardly attempted a closer look at the actions of energy producers and consumers in the region.³ Work on energy policies and their consequences tends to remain confined to geopolitical visions of a new ‘Great Game’ (Kleveman 2003; Starr and Cornell 2005), with Central Asian governments seeking profitable economic and political deals with China, the European Union or Russia. The effects of such transnational manoeuvres on the domestic energy market and the region’s citizens, or government response to domestic demands hardly feature in this ‘game’.

Recently the role of elites and government actors in shaping these policies, and reaping their benefits, has come under scrutiny (Heinrich and Pleines 2012; Overland, Kjaernet, and Kendall-Taylor 2010). Meanwhile ordinary citizens in the region – be they oil workers, government employees, entrepreneurs, school children or pensioners – are all affected by the reliability of access to sources of heating, lighting and motorized transport, and their ability to pay for it. This issue bridges the gap between the discussion of Central Asia and the Caucasus as an energy hub for Eurasia and the paucity of information on citizens’ everyday experiences of energy use,⁴ and their strategies to overcome challenges; these include the popular contestations mentioned above.⁵

With these serious issues in mind, this multidisciplinary issue – ‘Everyday Energy Politics in Central Asia and the Caucasus: Citizens’ Needs, Entitlements and Struggles for Access’ – explores the role of energy in people’s lives throughout Central Asia and beyond. It brings together legacies of the Soviet era with changes since independence that have shaped people’s patterns of energy use and their strategies for coping with changes. There are two emerging cross-cutting themes: Soviet legacies and notions of entitlement which underpin people’s perceptions of energy provision.

Intertwined historical experiences of energy policies and subsequent expectations and demands have spurred innovations, but also popular unrest. Many citizens continue to have expectations that were fostered during the Soviet era – that access to energy should be universal and cheap.⁶ The continued (over-)use of predominantly Soviet-era infrastructure results in people lamenting over unreliable services. The articles in this issue explore how Soviet legacies and perceptions of entitlement continue to shape people’s understanding of energy provision and use, and, in some cases, how people are beginning to assert their own expectations in energy sector developments.

Soviet policies and legacies

The Soviet era promoted the largest expansion of energy production and consumption in the region, and helped foster a perception of universal entitlement. Energy sector development in Soviet Central Asia benefitted from the push to electrify all of the Soviet Union and promote industry. Addressing the Moscow Gubernia Conference of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) on 21 November 1920, Vladimir Lenin announced that ‘Communism equals Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country.’⁷ Under this slogan, the country set out on an ambitious plan developed by the State Commission for the Electrification of Russia (GOELRO)⁸ to base development on electricity and to improve economic output.

In Central Asia before the October Revolution, there were only a few energy-generating facilities which mainly supplied electricity to nearby industrial projects. In Kyrgyzstan, for example, there were five electricity stations built in 1913 and 1914 (Tuleberdiev, Rakhimov, and Belyakov 1997). Hydroelectric technology was also being used at that time in the region; a Tajik border post in Khorog had its first small hydropower station in 1913.⁹ As industry grew, small towns began to receive electricity stations together with hydroelectric power stations (Karybekov and Sarybaeva 2004, 46). As part of the second five-year plan in the 1930s, many small-scale hydropower and thermo-electric power stations were installed to provide electricity for the agricultural sector. Sovkhozes (state farms) and kolkhozes (collective farms) received electricity in the years to come. The Soviet push for electrification also extended to Afghanistan, starting from the 1950s and initiating large-scale hydroelectric projects completed in the 1960s.

The energy revolution was not only intended for industrial and agricultural development to stimulate economic growth, but also to provide the people with the benefits of technological and economic advances, as well as ‘modernity’ or ‘tsivilizatsiya’ (Russian, ‘civilisation’). The period of expansion in the 1960s, particularly with thermal power plants located in larger towns, also coincided with Khrushchev’s building campaign to bring people to cities and provide affordable, modern apartments with their own kitchens (Reid 2005, 2006). However, for rural communities, particularly in mountainous areas, small-scale hydroelectric stations and generators were still the most economic and feasible way of providing electricity.

While small-scale electricity stations were being installed throughout the region, there were also plans for large-scale hydroelectric power stations. Once these started operating in the 1960s and 1970s, electricity generation capacity rose significantly. In Kyrgyzstan, for example, from 1970 to 1990, electricity generation from hydropower rose over 650% in terms of millions of kilowatt-hours, and again rose over 84% from 1980 to 1990 (Tuleberdiev, Rakhimov, and Belyak...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• 1. Mr Light and people’s everyday energy struggles in Central Asia and the Caucasus: an introduction
• 2. The illumination of marginality: how ethnic Hazaras in Bamyan, Afghanistan, perceive the lack of electricity as discrimination
• 3. Kyrgyzstan’s dark ages: framing and the 2010 hydroelectric revolution
• 4. Resource dependence and measurement technology: international and domestic influences on energy sector development in Armenia and Georgia
• 5. Flows of oil, flows of people: resource-extraction industry, labour market and migration in western Kazakhstan
• 6. Notes on the moral economy of gas in present-day Azerbaijan
• 7. Switching off or switching source: energy consumption and household response to higher energy prices in the Kyrgyz Republic
• 8. Bottom-up and top-down dynamics of the energy transformation in the Eastern Pamirs of Tajikistan’s Gorno Badakhshan region
• Index