Climate Change And The Future Of Central Asia-South Asia Connectivity – Analysis

The Middle Corridor -- or the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route -- is a network of roads, railroads, and ports that connect China to Europe. It offers an alternative to a northern route which largely passes through Russia, and to maritime routes. Credit: RFE/RL

June 12, 2026 
By Dr. Shanthie Mariet D Souza

At the 64th session of the U.N. climate framework (UNFCCC) subsidiary bodies (SB64) in Bonn, Germany, which is running June 8-18, India – alongside a host of international groupings spanning the ideological spectrum – has called for direct action on a widening gap in climate-relevant funding. Whether any concrete outcomes will emerge from the ongoing meeting is so far unclear. Nevertheless, thousands of kilometers to the east, in Central as well as South Asia, the consequences of inaction are significant, not just for climate mitigation and adaptation goals of the regions’ countries, but also for the ambitious regional connectivity projects between the two.

The Hindu Kush Himalaya region, which stretches across Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, and Pakistan, is arguably the epicenter of the climate emergency confronting both Central and South Asia. According to estimates, glaciers across the 3,500-kilometer arc, also known as the Third Pole, are retreating 65 percent faster than in the previous decade. Ten major river basins originate from the region. The glacier melt can potentially threaten the water supply for nearly 2 billion people across all eight countries. The region has already recorded a 23-year low in snow persistence for the third consecutive year. In 2025, for instance, the Indus river basin ran 16 percent below normal and some eastern river basins are facing deficits of up to 50 percent.

In Central Asia, there is a different crisis, involving a dearth of water. Over the past 70 years, the region has already warmed by 1.2 degrees C, which has led to a 20 percent decline in snow depth. Projected temperature rise of 2-6 degrees C by century’s end threatens to intensify droughts and land degradation. Already, 2024 saw the region’s worst flooding in over 70 years, even as the Western Himalayas, eastern Iran, and parts of Afghanistan experienced below-normal precipitation. This pattern of extremes can become more frequent.

Against this backdrop, I participated in the second Termez Dialogue, held on June 4-6 in Uzbekistan. The primary theme of the event was connectivity between Central and South Asia, with an additional focus on climate change and environmental resilience related to the ambitious regional connectivity projects. The dialogue also highlighted a growing recognition that connectivity and climate adaptation must be seen as intertwined agendas. The discussion emphasized that Afghanistan plays a crucial role as a strategic link between Central and South Asia. Therefore, it is essential to integrate Afghanistan into regional climate adaptation frameworks and conversations to ensure both environmental security and physical connectivity.


The dialogue is part of Uzbekistan’s urgent exploration of the possibilities for implementing several major infrastructure projects linking Central and South Asia, most of which run through Afghanistan. Apart from the bottlenecks posed by regional rivalries, there is also a realization that projects such as CASA-1000, the INSTC, and the TAPI pipeline, all still in their incipient stages of implementation despite being under discussion for decades, were conceptualized on environmental assumptions that climate change seems on the verge of now to be undermining.

Take, for instance, the curious case of the Central Asia-South Asia (CASA-1000) project, originally conceptualized as far back as 2008. The logic of this $1.2 billion power transmission effort, designed to carry surplus hydroelectricity from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to Afghanistan and Pakistan, rests on the existence of surplus glacial and snowmelt-fed hydropower in the summer months. If projections of continuing glacial retreat, as well as consequent peaking river flows followed by declines after 2050, hold, those surpluses could disappear entirely. Unless climate resilience is inbuilt into the project, as the World Bank clearly underlines, hydropower generation can undergo significant disruption, driving the project into a no-show. Therefore, hydropower projections for the project need to be stress-tested against climate scenarios, not just current hydrology.

While one can argue that the involved countries will still derive benefit from the project for more than two decades, Afghanistan’s incapacity to generate finances for its share of the project has introduced a roadblock. There seems to be no way around this, unless the Taliban generate revenue or convince international donors to unfreeze financing. Both seem to be a herculean task but a necessary condition to break the current impasse.


The $10 billion Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline project, the initial concept for which dates to the 1990s, is set to traverse some of the most climate-vulnerable and politically fragile terrain in the world. A desertifying and drought-prone Afghanistan is not the most ideal terrain to build and operate the infrastructure needed for the project. Therefore, the pipeline routes for the project need to account for changing precipitation and temperature profiles across Afghanistan and Pakistan, in addition to managing the acrimonious relationships between these two countries and the associated funding challenges.

In contrast, the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), a 7,200-kilometer multi-modal network connecting India, Iran, Azerbaijan, Russia, and Central Asia, which originated in 2002, is somewhat less directly exposed to glacial dynamics. The project is of immense importance to India. Still, extreme weather events along its overland and maritime routes face scenarios of shifting precipitation patterns, which have cast a shadow over the integration of road and rail networks. The INSTC, without significant climate resilience modifications, may not prove viable in the long run. It needs to factor in the increased frequency of extreme weather events that will test road, rail, and port infrastructure over their operational lifetimes.

Uzbekistan’s climate adaptation funding deficit is estimated at $7.2 billion through 2030. The country is actively seeking international climate finance to close the gap, experimenting with green investments and agricultural water-saving technologies, and attempting to shift from state-led fossil fuel dependence toward renewable energy and climate resilience.

As could perhaps be expected, the countries most exposed to these climate risks are also among those least equipped to manage them without external assistance. Climate negotiations in the past years have become all about forceful articulation of positions and a bit of grand bargaining. U.S. President Donald Trump’s exit from the global climate treaty puts enormous pressure even on the wealthy and willing countries to provide finances for the adaptation and mitigation funds. It is for this reason that India has been insisting that climate financing is at the core of adaptation. But the gnawing gap between the ambitions being expressed in Bonn and the institutional architecture available to channel resources toward projects such as CASA-1000 or TAPI remains wide.

The climate crisis unfolding across the Hindu Kush Himalaya and Central Asia can reshape the viability of these ambitious connectivity projects. While these were conceived in a different climatic reality, and did not include deliberate climate-proofing, they now risk becoming stranded investments. Forums such as the Termez Dialogue signal a growing awareness and interest in binding connectivity and climate resilience together. An institutional bridge between climate finance negotiations and on-the-ground infrastructure planning in South and Central Asia could be the next target for these two regions if they intend to implement these much-delayed projects and derive economic benefits along with environmental safety for the region.

This article was published at The Diplomat


About Dr. Shanthie Mariet D Souza
Dr. Shanthie Mariet D'Souza is President & Founder of Mantraya; Consultant/ Security and Political Analyst; Expert and Contributor to the Middle East-Asia Project (MAP) at the Middle East Institute, Washington DC; Senior Analyst, South Asia desk, Wikistrat Analytic Community, New York; Associate Editor, Journal of Asian Security & International Affairs, Sage Publications; Strategic Studies Network (SSN) Fellow, Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies, National Defense University, Washington DC; Advisor, Independent Conflict Research & Analysis (ICRA), London. Shanthie has previously been Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS).
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