Central Asia has entered a new phase of regional cooperation. The question is no longer simply whether the five countries can work together. Increasingly, it is whether growing political trust can be converted into practical institutions, shared measurements and tangible results for the people of the region.
Jakhongir Isaev.
The Sustainable Development Goals offer an important test.
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan have each incorporated the 2030 Agenda into national development policies to varying degrees. Yet some of the region’s most difficult development challenges cannot be solved within national borders.
Water flows across them. Energy systems increasingly depend on regional balancing and trade. Climate change affects shared river basins, glaciers, pastures and ecosystems. Transport corridors only deliver their full economic value when they function across several countries. Air pollution, desertification and food security similarly have a regional dimension.
This creates a fundamental mismatch: many challenges are regional, while most mechanisms for implementing and measuring the SDGs remain national.
A foundation already exists
Central Asia is not starting from zero.
In 2021, the European Union and UNDP launched a Regional SDG Platform designed to work with governments and civil society in all five Central Asian states. The initiative supported knowledge exchange, policy analysis, monitoring and SDG financing. In 2024, a Regional SDG Monitoring Panel was launched to provide an integrated regional view of trends, policies, interlinkages, financing and data gaps.
Kazakhstan has played an important role in this process.
More significantly, Almaty is becoming home to the United Nations Regional Centre for the Sustainable Development Goals for Central Asia and Afghanistan. In August 2025, UN Secretary-General António Guterres and President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev witnessed the signing of the host country agreement. Guterres said the Centre could help translate stronger political relations in Central Asia into deeper economic integration.
The opportunity now is to turn that institutional foundation into measurable results.
Start with a limited number of shared priorities
Regional cooperation does not require Central Asian countries to create a second set of 17 SDGs or duplicate national institutions. A more realistic approach would be to identify a small number of issues where regional action clearly adds value.
Water and energy should be among the first.
Upstream and downstream interests have historically made this one of Central Asia’s most complicated policy areas. Climate change is making coordination increasingly unavoidable. Changes in glaciers and river flows affect agriculture, hydropower generation, ecosystems and drinking-water security across borders.
Instead of addressing water, energy and climate adaptation through separate policy tracks, countries could gradually develop shared indicators covering water efficiency, seasonal energy exchange, ecosystem resilience and climate risks.
Transport connectivity provides another opportunity. Governments understandably measure new roads, railways, border facilities and trade volumes nationally. But the real economic value of a corridor depends on the performance of the entire route.
Regional indicators could therefore measure border-crossing times, logistics reliability, digital customs interoperability and the environmental footprint of major corridors.
From data exchange to shared accountability
A regional approach also requires better data.
Central Asian governments already collect large volumes of statistics for national SDG monitoring. The challenge is not necessarily to create more indicators, but to make selected data comparable and useful for joint decision-making.
The existing regional SDG monitoring experience provides a starting point. The next step could be a compact regional dashboard focusing only on cross-border challenges. Governments, research institutions, civil society and international organizations could jointly review progress on a limited set of indicators each year.
This would not replace national reporting to the United Nations. It would complement it.
The difference is important. National reports ask: How is our country progressing? A regional mechanism would ask another question: Where can cooperation produce an outcome that no country can achieve alone?
The political moment is favorable
There is also a broader political reason to move now.
On 20 May 2026, the UN General Assembly adopted without a vote Resolution 80/260, “Strengthening regional cooperation and economic integration to ensure sustainable development in the Central Asian region.” The resolution encourages closer coordination among Central Asian states and calls on UN agencies, funds and programmes to align their activities with regional priorities.
This provides political legitimacy for moving from general commitments toward practical regional instruments.
The UN Regional Centre in Almaty could become an important platform for this work — not as a supranational institution, but as a neutral facilitator of data exchange, policy dialogue, expertise and joint initiatives.
Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, as the region’s two largest economies, have a particular opportunity to support this transition. But sustainable regionalism cannot be built around two countries alone. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are indispensable to water and energy cooperation; Turkmenistan is critical to connectivity, energy and engagement with Afghanistan.
The principle must therefore remain inclusive: five countries, shared ownership and practical benefits for all.
A Central Asian contribution to the global SDG debate
The implications could reach beyond the region.
The 2030 Agenda was designed around universal goals implemented primarily through national frameworks. Yet many of today’s development challenges — climate change, water scarcity, migration, energy transition, ecosystems and transport connectivity — are inherently transboundary.
Central Asia could help demonstrate how the gap between national commitments and regional realities can be narrowed.
The region does not need grand new structures. It needs a disciplined transition from dialogue to delivery: a few shared priorities, comparable indicators, regular review and joint projects where cooperation produces demonstrably better outcomes.
The political rapprochement of recent years has created an opportunity. The institutional foundations are beginning to emerge.
The next measure of Central Asian cooperation should therefore be not how often countries meet, but what they can achieve together.
The author is Jakhongir Isaev, the head of Department at the Center for Sustainable Development in Uzbekistan.
