Tajikistan
| Official name Republic of Tajikistan Population 7,320,815 (2006 estimate) Area 143,100 sq km Capital Dushanbe 575,900 (2002 estimate) Population growth rate 2.19 percent (2006 estimate) GDP per capita (U.S.$) $320 (2004) GDP by economic sector Agriculture, forestry, fishing 24.2 percent (2004) Industry 30.6 percent (2004) Services 45.3 percent (2004) Natural resources Hydropower, some petroleum, uranium, mercury, brown coal, lead, zinc, antimony, tungsten, silver, gold |
SPARE and energy in Tajikistan.
Practice and policy on decentralized energy, school energy educational project SPARE.
Partners:
Little Earth
+992372241277
timur.idrisov@gmail.com
Little Earth works on different environmental topics, but has its main orientation towards energy, climate and education. Little Earth has during the past years built up important knowledge on decentralized energy solutions, and has implemented several pilot projects within this field. Their contacts with relevant stakeholders are also gradually developed, and Little Earth has gradually earned a position as an important national stakeholder within these thematic.
Background:
Tajikistan is the poorest country of Central Asia. The country suffers severely from unstable energy services. Eelectricity cut-offs are regular, and can last for days. Many areas get electricity supply only a couple of hours per day, and for example rural schools work without electricity for weeks and months. Only the biggest cities have district heating, which is not properly working. Long power cuts in temperatures down to minus 30 affects also public sector as hospitals and schools.
Buildings are general in a bad condition. Insulation is mostly non-existent, and windows and doors have often wide open cracks. For the educational sector this result is very poor educational possibilities during wintertime. Even new buildings are built without the most elementary energy efficiency features. Traditional buildings from local materials are dominating in rural areas. It is a big potential for simple measures to improve the energy efficiency and earthquake resistance within traditional building construction.
The energy situation is closely linked with environmental and social situation. Tajikistan suffers from deforestation, as people harvest firewood in order to heat and cook. Lack of energy during wintertime make the schools close at a time of the year when kids have the best opportunity to attend education. During spring and autumn kids are often taken out of school in order to help their parents in the fields. As many Tajik males/fathers have migrated to Russia for work, this problem has grown worse during the past years.
