| Deteriorating energy infrastructure in the CIS stalls development in the region (2009-12-21)
Following the recently held CASE International Conference, CASE has published the research of Ben Slay, a panelist from the third session of the conference, titled Energy Security in Europe and Other Regions. In Energy security, Poverty and Vulnerability in Central Asia and the Wider European Neighborhood, Slay argues that two decades of under-investment in Soviet-era energy, water, and communal service infrastructures threaten significant reductions in access to these services in the poorer countries of this region, particularly Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. These problems are manifesting themselves both in terms of growing physical restrictions on access to energy, water, and communal service networks in these countries, and in terms of rapid growth in tariffs for these services which could price some vulnerable households “out of the market”. The author also suggests that these problems are apparent to various degrees in a number of other former Soviet republics, and that the impact of the global economic crisis is likely to exacerbate these problems. By calling attention to growing household vulnerability to energy and water insecurities, particularly in Central Asia, the paper seeks to bring an economic development perspective to bear on energy policy debates in the wider European region. 
Ben Slay is the Senior Economist at UNDP’s Regional Bureau for Europe and CIS, Bratislava Energy security, Poverty and Vulnerability in Central Asia and the Wider European Neighborhood has been published as No. 396 in the CASE Network and Analyses Publication Series [full text report] |