It is already generally accepted that the climate will worsen everywhere due to global warming on planet Earth. Uzbekistan, as is known, is also on the planet Earth.
Unfortunately, the current leadership of Uzbekistan consists in the overwhelming majority of senior officials, pupils of the administrative-command system of the USSR. They think primitively in the paradigm of the superiority of the strength of scientific and technological progress over the forces of nature and human society. Therefore, they are mentally incapable of realizing that in Uzbekistan it is necessary to change the former intensively-industrial course of development of the Uzbek economy to the required course of preparing the economy and society for the expected sharp deterioration of the climate.
The President of Uzbekistan and his government’s ministers never even mentioned in their speeches about this danger that is approaching the country’s population.
But society needs to be informed of all the impending threats of climate deterioration.
Meanwhile, the government of Uzbekistan is trying in every possible way to hide this information from the population, because when the residents know the inevitability of these threats, their civil self-organization will start to prepare for these threats of climate deterioration. And the government of Uzbekistan is now very afraid of any free self-organization of citizens, which always leads to increased public interest in economic freedom and democratic governance.
The government of Uzbekistan is now trying in every possible way to preserve the existing situation in the economy, when all natural resources of the country are managed by government officials based on numerous power structures. Of course, total corruption, inefficient use of natural resources, massive poverty of the population and low level of human development will thrive in such an economy.
The government is keen on only one direction – attracting foreign business to the country. And the local population is allowed to serve foreign tourists and investors.
But there is a real danger that under such an economic policy, natural resources will be given to a long-term concession only to large transnational corporations with their dirty technologies. And the local population will be pushed out of the country in search of work.
Now only a small part of the opposition of Uzbekistan considers the primary task to transfer the right of free and lawful use of natural resources to the most residents of the country. For example, the well-known oppositionist Bakhodir Choriev developed a plan for transferring the country’s land resources into the ownership of citizens of Uzbekistan using vouchers.
At the beginning of 2018 in Uzbekistan, children under 15 years of age were 26.5% of the population. Therefore, it is very important in the school system to develop an integral course on “Earth’s climate and human civilization”, which would include knowledge of the laws of physics, chemistry and biology, geography, history as parts of a single educational course.
The Youth Supplement to UNFPA’s State of the World Population Report (https://www.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/pub-pdf/youth_swp_2009.pdf) addresses climate change and young people, through the lens of what impact climate change is predicted to have, and what that will mean for young people’s lives, livelihoods, health, rights and development. The Youth Supplement explores these issues because the young people of today will be standing in the frontline in the coming decades, meeting the challenges posed by climate change.
As the Youth Supplement shows, young people will be dealing with the threats and opportunities of climate change whether they choose to do so or are forced to do so, and whether they like it or not. Some of the young people featured in the Youth Supplement have started their passage to adulthood with a strong interest in something completely different, but having identified the issue of climate change and realized how it relates to their lives and communities, they shifted their focus.
Climate change is not an isolated phenomenon; on the contrary it will affect young people in all aspects of their lives. The impact of climate change will in many cases be strongest in developing countries, and thus climate change poses a threat to development, as it risks hampering access to water, food, sanitation and security, among other things.
Climate change vulnerability also has gender and age aspects: Women account for about two-thirds of the poor people in the world, and about seventy percent of the world’s farmers, meaning women will face the lion’s share of the challenges in many rural areas.
Today’s actions of governments, the private sector and civil society will determine what lies in store for them, and how well equipped they are for what is to come.
Ahtam Shaimardanov
California
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