OSCE fosters dialogue on critical infrastructure resilience in Central Asia and beyond

On 22 November 2024, 25 government officials from Central Asia gathered in Ashgabat for a Regional Conference on “Critical Infrastructure Protection in Central Asia: Strengthening Resilience, Enhancing Security”. The event was organized by the OSCE Transnational Threats Department, the Office of the Co-ordinator of OSCE Economic and Environmental Activities and the OSCE Centre in Ashgabat, in co-operation with the Government of Turkmenistan.

Experts and officials responsible for energy security, infrastructure protection, counter-terrorism and climate adaptation from government, academia, international organizations and the private sector discussed critical infrastructure resilience, such as physical security considerations, long-term climate variability and its impact on energy security, and how to enhance connectivity and international collaboration.

“I urge all participants of the event to make the most of this platform for a broad dialogue on countering long-standing and new threats to critical infrastructure, sharing best practices and approaches to infrastructure protection and opportunities to strengthen sustainability and regional co-operation,” said Yazguly Agabayev, Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of Turkmenistan.

The Government of Turkmenistan also facilitated a site visit for the participants to an energy appliances workshop facility under the Ministry of Energy of Turkmenistan.

“Terrorists, hackers and natural events such as storms, heat waves and floods all disrupt, damage and even destroy critical infrastructure. In the face of these challenges to our critical infrastructure, the question we must ask ourselves is: how do we prepare for disruptions? In our view, one part of the answer is to increase the resilience of critical infrastructure networks through national policies and strengthened public-private partnerships,” emphasized Ambassador Alena Kupchyna, OSCE Co-ordinator of Activities to Address Transnational Threats, in her opening remarks.

Ambassador John McGregor, Head of the OSCE Centre in Ashgabat highlighted the importance of international collaboration.

“Our interconnectedness means that the failure of critical infrastructure in one country can have ripple effects across borders. Thus, addressing this challenge requires a collective effort. The collaboration we pursue here today is a vital step in building stronger, more resilient infrastructure systems across Central Asia and beyond,” he said.

The conference was organized in part within the framework of the OSCE extra-budgetary projects “Strengthening Energy Sector Co-operation and Analysis in Central Asia in the Context of Afghanistan’s Energy Crisis”, funded by Germany and Sweden, and “Mitigating Climate Change Threats to Critical Energy Infrastructure”, funded by Austria, Germany, Italy, Poland and the United States of America.