Past and potential future socioeconomic impacts of environmental hazards in Kyrgyzstan

Abstract

This chapter presents an overview on the past socioeconomic impacts of natural hazards, locally combined with severe ecological consequences, in Kyrgyzstan, starting with the end of the 19th century. It will also provide a prospective view on the type of natural events that could have major impacts with nationwide consequences. The analysis of past events shows that compared, e.g., to countries in Western Europe the environmental situation of this relatively small Central Asian country is clearly aggravated through the regular occurrence of multiple geological hazards. Those hazards include numerous disastrous landslides that occur almost every year, and strong (M > 6.3) to very strong (M > 7) earthquakes that are observed once per decade or once per quarter-century, respectively. The review of past events will show that some past earthquakes had fundamental impacts on the governmental structure; this is exemplified by the change of name of the present capital of Kyrgyzstan, Bishkek, in connection with the reconstruction of the city after major impacting seismic events. In this regard, it is important to situate Kyrgyzstan in the general Central Asian context as similar governmental impacts occurred also in the neighbouring countries. The second factor increasing environmental hazards at local or subregional scale is related to the presence of mining and nuclear waste tailings and dumps in several areas distributed all over the country. Here, we will focus on some hotspots such as the Mailuu-Suu River valley. In those areas, ecological disasters are closely depending on natural hazard impacts. Due to the combined presence of multiple types of waste and of active landslides that can be reactivated by earthquakes, most efforts of environmental hazard remediation are presently concentrated on those areas, partly with support of multi-million USD projects. Finally, a third point will be highlighted as it will have the most predictable future negative impacts in many parts of the country - those related to climate change on the water resources and multiple highmountain hazards (snow avalanches, glacier lakes, landslide dam stability and outburst floods). Those impacts can be considered as the most predictable ones as climate change cannot be denied anymore; therefore, related hazards are less aleatory than those induced by geological hazards, earthquakes, in particular. Some changing high-mountain hazards are also likely to impact more and more the aforementioned environmental hotspots in Kyrgyzstan, including also dam structures and reservoirs, through the intermediate of increased flood hazards. Providing a quantitative verification of social and economic impacts of geological, climatic and general environmental hazards is not always possible. Therefore, part of the chapter will be dedicated to a critical analysis of available statistics describing those impacts. This is necessary in order to make reliable predictions of future consequences of hazards that also need to take into account the social changes to which Kyrgyzstan is exposed: rural exodus, decreasing general population, changing economic situation of private persons and public institutions, as well as the changing risk perception in the population. © 2017 Nova Science Publishers, Inc