Governing co-benefits: institutional coordination between climate and air-quality policy in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan

CO 2 and the major pollutants in the local air quality are both generated mainly through the burning of fossil fuels, hence there is a possibility of generating great health and economic co-benefits through coordinating policies to tackle climate change and air quality. However, this issue takes particular significance in Central Asia where in 2021 ambient air pollution with fine particulates was responsible for 65,000 + premature deaths and health costs of about USD 15–21 billion in the region, and at the same time, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan rank as some of the most emissions-intensive countries in the world. Nevertheless, the policy areas are regulated by different bodies using different tools and the co-benefits are underutilized. The purpose of this research is to investigate how Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan coordinate across the domains and what can be learned from the other. The analysis is an organized and tightly focused paired comparison informed by classical theories of policy coordination, the whole-of-government approach, and a multi-dimensional framework of policy integration. The evidential basis will consist of a specified set of official documents and international evaluations issued during 2013 to 2026, rooted in sixteen principal national policies and evaluations, plus other sources cited in the bibliography, and assessed using directed content analysis with an overt coding scheme based on Metcalfe’s coordination scale, along with independent double-coding and triangulation. This institutional analysis is complemented with quantifiable assessments of the health and economic impacts, consideration of the transboundary element by reference to models from Europe (Air Convention, EU NEC Directive) and Asia (China’s pollution-carbon synergies program), and discussion of the corporate and administrative constraints on the existing regime. Both countries exhibit high levels of climate leadership by their executives, but low levels of horizontal integration of climate and air quality management, each country reaching this conclusion using different tools: a well-developed but cheap emissions trading scheme in Kazakhstan, a newly-developed project based crediting scheme in Uzbekistan. The experience of Kazakhstan with its 12 years of ETS and its failures in monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) can provide practical guidelines for design of the new system in Uzbekistan; the experience of Uzbekistan in concentrating climate policy-making and earmarking environmental funds is an alternative path for Kazakhstan to follow. We translate our conclusions into recommendations naming responsible agencies, mechanisms and indicators of monitoring.

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