ABSTRACT
In the face of growing urbanization over the past 15 years, administrations of capital cities in Central Asia have been taking unpopular and highly contested decisions over cities landscapes and infrastructure whilst ignoring urgent environmental issues, from massive tree felling in order to widen the roads for cars, the expansion of garbage dumps around cities, the ignorance of drastic atmospheric air pollution increasing threefold, to selling the lands in parks and tree zones to private construction companies. Most of these activities have been actively challenged by local environmental activists through public dialogues, policy proposals, and roundtable discussions, as well as riots and protests. However, ubiquitous corruption, authoritarian regimes, fragile democracies, and other socio-economic problems have been foreclosing space for local civil society. Nevertheless, environmental activists and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have played a significant role in the development of civil society. This chapter provides an overview of civil society in Central Asia with an emphasis on environmental civil groups, highlighting the strong and weak cases of cooperation between civilsociety and governments.
