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Locals have come to dread the winter in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan’s capital, with plunging temperatures invariably accompanied by a suffocating layer of smog. This year has been particularly bad: During a recent cold snap, air quality in the city ranked third-worst in the world.
The government has made plenty of promises to tackle the problem, but residents are yet to feel tangible results. On January 22, in a fast-paced session at the Jogorku Kenesh, Kyrgyzstan’s parliament, deputies proposed a swathe of new ideas ranging from mobile air quality monitoring stations to restrictions on the sale of low-quality coal. Others advocated a tax on older vehicles, or indeed to banish cars from the city altogether for 24 hours.
Many are convinced the government is dragging its heels. Back in November, MP Kamila Talieva called for making 2025 “The Year of the Fight Against Smog”, accusing the authorities of “indifference”.
But there are few means of holding the authorities to account. While dirty air might act as a physical rebuke to a regime that has silenced other sources of criticism, will it prompt it into action?
A Thick Layer of Smog
Recent drone footage from local website Kaktus Media showed the scale of the challenge facing the authorities. On an otherwise bright and cloudless winter day, the city below can barely be seen, wreathed in a layer of grey mist.
Down at street level, this cloying haze can be hazardous. On a bad day, the smog is not only visible, but can be perceived by all the senses: the sound of people coughing, and the smell and taste of the fumes.
A spokesperson for the World Bank, which has pledged $50 million to improve air quality in Kyrgyzstan, told Vlast that the major threat is presented by extremely fine, inhalable particles called PM2.5.
“Over recent winters, average daily PM2.5 levels often surpassed 200 micrograms per cubic meter (µg/m³), exceeding the WHO guideline of 15 µg/m³ more than 13 times, which places Bishkek among the world’s most polluted cities,” the World Bank’s Country Office told Vlast in a note, adding that exposure to these particles “poses serious health risks, leading to respiratory infections, cancer, cardiovascular diseases, and premature deaths.”
The indirect effects are plenty: In the absence of fresh air, fewer people exercise, with outdoor activities such as jogging or cycling becoming hazardous.
All of this has a deleterious effect on public health. A 2022 report from the UN Development Programme (UNDP) estimated that health problems related to low air quality cost Kyrgyzstan $24 million per year and contributed to around 5,000 yearly premature deaths between 2010 and 2019.
Causes
“The smog problem in Bishkek is not unique,” said Xeniya Prilutskaya, an anthropologist and research associate at the University of Naples L’Orientale, who has studied activism around air quality since 2018.
Prilutskaya told Vlast that many Central Asian cities, including Almaty, are vulnerable to pollution in winter.
“Specific to the Central Asian region is the use of coal in thermal power plants,” Prilutskaya said, adding that Bishkek’s smog is caused by an accumulation of factors, including the use of coal for the heating of private homes; old cars with dated exhausts; an increase in the number of high-rise buildings, which prevent air flow around the city; and a growing population, which compounds all of these issues.
Since Kyrgyzstan’s independence in 1991, Bishkek’s population has almost doubled, from 648,000 to 1.1 million. Much of this growth has been concentrated in shanty towns, known locally as novostroiki. Unlike the city center, which is mainly heated by gas, these poorer districts tend to use coal as a heat source. Worse, the coal of choice tends to be lignite coal, mined from the infamous Kara-Keche mine in Naryn province. It’s dirty and inefficient, but cheaper than importing slightly higher quality coal from Kazakhstan.
Transport is another huge issue. “The problem is not so much the number of cars, but the number of old cars, with a bad or broken exhaust cleaning system,” Prilutskaya said.
According to latest government figures, 85% of the cars in Bishkek are over 15 years old. Catalytic converters, which are used to convert toxic gases from car exhausts into less harmful substances, often begin to wear out after around ten years.
The smog also creates a Catch-22 situation where people are less inclined to walk.
“I often take a car to work because it’s smoggy; and although I know I’m contributing to the problem, I don’t want my children exposed to that air,” Aibek Isakov, an entrepreneur living in the city center, told Vlast.
What Is Being Done?
The authorities, both at the local and national level, are often full of rhetoric about how they will conduct the so-called “Battle with Smog”. Almost every day brings a slew of new announcements and proposals, but progress on tackling the twin-issues of heating and vehicle emissions has been sluggish.
The government has loudly trumpeted the purchase of a fleet of gas-powered buses from China, a move that has been accompanied by the banning of minibuses from the city center.
Marlen Mamataliev, a deputy in the Ata-Jurt party, told Vlast that the minibuses, known locally as marshrutki, had to be removed.
“The marshrutki were simply killing the air because they all ran on diesel,” Mamataliev said.
At rush hour, the new buses are jam-packed with commuters, but they run in a limited number of directions. Mamataliev suggests that incorporating more circular routes, as well as a hop-on hop-off payment system that allows people to switch buses without paying twice, would also increase ridership.
Others claim the government has no interest in providing greener transportation. They cite the decision of Bishkek’s mayor, Aibek Zhunushaliev, to withdraw the city’s fleet of electric trolleybuses last summer. The mayor claimed that the trolleybuses were unprofitable and ridership was decreasing, while promising to bring in a fleet of electric buses, also from China.
Bermet Borubaeva, an environmental activist who has taken the government to court over the removal of the trolleybuses, told Vlast that the mayor did not act in the interest of the people.
“They just want to earn money; they will sell the cables as well as the land under the electric stations,” Borubaeva said.
The public transport shortage has contributed to increased traffic on the city’s roads. The hope that rapid adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) might provide a silver bullet has also been tempered. Recently released figures show a 28% fall in EVs imported from China in 2024. Meanwhile, a new EV factory being built in a joint-venture between the Kyrgyz government and Chinese carmaker China Hubei Zhuoyue Group, set to open in August last year, has been delayed. A new opening date has yet to be set.
Other solutions such as cycling, which have been important in combating pollution in cities around the world, do not appear to be on the agenda.
“The city administration very often views Bishkek as a city for motorists. Hence the constant expansion of roads, increase in parking spaces and reduction of space for pedestrians and bicycles, which accordingly only aggravates the problem,” Prilutskaya said.
But the biggest challenge is heating. A 2022 UNDP report concluded that the best and most effective way to improve air quality would be to convert the city’s heating supply from coal to gas. Although the government has made some strides in this direction, and every month there are new figures trumpeted about the numbers switching to gas, the fact remains that around 50% of Bishkek’s homes, especially in the suburbs, are still heated by coal.
The government has no plans to abandon coal, which is seen as an important source of autonomy for the cash-strapped nation.
In 2022, Kyrgyzstan’s President, Sadyr Japarov, announced an extension of the railway line to Kara-Keche in order to ease the transport of coal to the Bishkek power station. Higher grade coal from the Ming-Kush mine, also in Naryn province, started to supply the power plant in the summer of 2024.
In a sign of the importance that the government attaches to this energy self-sufficiency, coal imports from Kazakhstan fell 52% last year.
Is the Government Under Pressure?
Public attitudes are hard to gauge. Bishkek’s middle classes will often claim that smog is the most important issue that the city faces. Yet, in the poorer regions of the city, issues such as heating or lack of work matter far more.
Balancing Kyrgyzstan’s extremely limited resources is unlikely to leave anyone fully satisfied. Nevertheless, the issue has risen up the political agenda over the past decade, despite the crackdown on the free press.
“When I became a deputy in 2018, not everyone fully understood the problem back then,” Mamataliev said. “I remember the then-Prime Minister even said stupid things like, ‘smog is caused by people driving quickly through dust at the side of the road’. Nowadays this might seem funny. But fortunately, it has begun to be taken seriously since then.”
Others contend that politicians have different definitions of “taking it seriously”. In October 2024, energy minister Talibek Ibrayev went so far as to claim that there “would be no smog” in Bishkek this winter, causing widespread derision.
“I’m pretty sure that officials like him have air purifiers at home or have an opportunity to spend time far away from smog. That’s why he doesn’t even admit the problem exists,” one opposition activist told Vlast on condition of anonymity.
Finally, there are those who suspect that smog is a topic that gets disproportionate attention as it affects urban professionals including media types and activists.
“It’s an issue for the balkonskiy,” Alibek Mukambaev, a political scientist, told Vlast referring to Bishkek’s middle classes.
“These people might complain, but they are not going to be able to bring five hundred fit guys to the main square to storm the parliament – those are the people the government is worried about.”
According to Mukambaev, smog may actually be useful for the government:
“As long as the chattering classes are preoccupied by a topic like this, it stops them talking about more sensitive things.”
Joe Luc Barnes is a freelance journalist based in Central Asia.
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