Fostering Adaptive Governance and Resilience in Local Communities of Central Eurasia: From fragmented pasts to connected futures?

The region of stretching from the border of China to the edge of Europe is marked by a history of long distance trading routes, cultural connections and resulting cultural plurality. It was once the epitome of global trade through the ancient Silk Routes, whose relics dot the landscape. After the collapse of the Soviet Union however this is one of the few areas of the world where intra-regional trade flows have actually declined. States have struggled to fashion themselves with new nationalist imaginaries, under often authoritarian regimes. The fragmentation of (post-)soviet cultural and economic space hardened borders, limited mobility and reinscribed 'national' identities rather than cross-regional commonalities.

This situation is rapidly changing as China's 'Belt and Road Initiative' seeks to re-energise the old Silk Routes connecting its less developed West overland to Europe. The result, even before the infrastructure is fully developed, is new sets of hopes and fears in fragile states and societies. This GCRF cluster will map the discrepancies between projected (state-led, top down) infrastructures (and other pressures of globalisation) and imagined futures in the wake of the New Silk Roads.

The effects of these transit-led economic corridors are differentiated between communities , economic sectors, places and genders. They summon up distant connections and global flows, real and imagined, intended and unintended, desired and feared changing the connectedness of once separate places. But they can also disconnect existing local connections, cutting across local transport, they can bring passing trade and passing trouble - where, for instance, the Worldbank reports both of female economic gains but also rising sexual exploitation along highway development in Asia.

This cluster brings together 3 GCRF projects that span 7 countries across central Eurasia. Cumulatively they bring a powerful set of baseline data about changing senses of connectedness in the countries. Together in the cluster they will explore how participatory methods might open ways for more inclusive governance of economic corridors - looking for tools that might work in the cultural and governance contexts of Central Eurasia. We will explore how communities can find ways to articulate their different and clashing spatio-temporal imaginaries of connected futures.

The cluster will focus of two cases in this initial phase of the call - one at the Eastern and one at the Western end of the region. At the Eastern end, Angren in Uzbekistan is a heavy industrial town that suffered decline when Soviet era transport routes across Kazakhstan became international and subject to political barriers. Now a 19.2km Chinese built tunnel and rail link through 3000m mountains connects it to the rest of Uzbekistan promising a new future on E-W economic corridors stretching to the Caucasus, the Arabian Sea and Europe. But leaves it beholden to Chinese transport and flows both legal and illicit. At the Western, Belarus is the gateway for the Eurasian Land Corridor from Central Asia via Russia into Europe. New Chinese led developments in Svetlogorsk, bring the promise of new industries, new markets but also migrants.

The objectives are (i) to pilot communal participatory engagement models in the above-chosen cases, and (ii) to discuss best practice adaptive governance techniques with regional policy communities, in order to develop more sustainable modes of engagement with the wider region - at the local, sub-regional, regional, and international levels - in the future (phase II).

The broad aim of the cluster is to explore ways that the governance in the context of large infrastructural projects can be effective, accountable and transparent (SDG16.6) whilst also being adaptive to local needs and contextual realities. The world region in which the cluster is focused has different models of governance representing competing influences from Europe, Russia and China. The implementation of governance though tends to share a "strong-weak" state approach, in which governance is exercised from a central authority but may be locally applied in uneven and ineffective ways. There are relatively few traditions and models of local participatory processes, though we will draw on the developing processes from Mongolian extractives sector pioneered with the Gobi Mediation Framework. The aim is to create possible processes to enable 'responsive, inclusive, participatory and representative decision-making' (SDG16.7).

The cluster brings together projects working on different domains (around state governance, extractive industries and cultural heritage) across Central Eurasia that each have used different and innovative participatory methods - from citizen juries and BBC Question Time type debates in COMPASS, to structured conflict mediation in the Gobi Framework project, to 'CommuniTea' diagramming in the Resilient Silk Routes Heritage network to 'Academies for Democracy' opening up to local knowledge in Laajverd's 'Visiting Schools'. We will work to develop practices by piloting combinations through what Dutch planners called 'infralabs' -- short term, focused engagements with specific infrastructures - to see which combinations and methods work best in addressing the implications of infrastructures in this region. This will mean soliciting local stakeholder concerns, developing and a programmed intervention and working through the issues in participatory exercises with local communities. These will address not only tangible issues (of resource) but also the hopes and desires, and the fears and concerns, for different imagined futures promised by the economic corridors. The methods will look to include visual media, maps and diagrams as ways to address uneven literacy and technical vocabulary.

We will then take the issues surfaced and look to engage with stakeholders with influence, be they NGOs or the relevant government departments, agencies or committees. We will use visual materials reworked into brochures, exhibitions and via an online video to increase the accessibility of local issues and to use more persuasive media than conventional reports. The aim for the two case studies (in Belarus and Uzbekistan) in this phase one call is in an immediate sense to address issues there but also to develop routes for participation that will enable an adaptive governance posture, that is not top-dwon from the centre but modulated by local needs. Focusing on the infrastructural develop of 'economic corridors' through Central Asia as part of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative we aim to help ensure people's access to 'reliable, sustainable and resilient infrastructure, including regional and transborder infrastructure' (SDG9.1).

We will follow these activities by a UK focused event, looking to the British and Western European expert and policy communities (such as DfID, parliamentarians like Lord Teveson, FCO (LoS attached), Cabinet Office) and helping them address the reality of the experiences of Chinese infrastructure development for local communities in Central Asia, rather than the inter-state and geostrategic view.