No Shade in the Shadow of Oil: Kazakhstan’s Intersecting Climate and Energy Security Challenges

Summary

Kazakhstan stands at the crossroads of two deepening structural challenges: accelerating climate change and persistent energy insecurity. Rising temperatures, vanishing glaciers, and the intensification of droughts and floods are threatening the country’s ecological stability, water systems, and agricultural livelihoods. At the same time, Kazakhstan’s ageing energy infrastructure, domestic supply shortfalls, and overreliance on fossil fuels expose it to both internal strain and external geopolitical risk. Its economic model remains anchored in hydrocarbon exports, even as climate impacts disrupt rural production systems and erode the very water sources needed to sustain life and industry. While Kazakhstan has signaled a growing commitment to climate action—via renewables investment, water governance reform, and a carbon neutrality pledge for 2060—its energy transition is constrained by institutional inertia, entrenched elite interests, and structural dependency on fossil fuel revenues. This report examines the interconnected risks arising from Kazakhstan’s environmental fragility and energy system vulnerabilities, and the policy responses underway to confront them.