Following ENVSEC assessments the three main groups of issues as relevant to environmental and security issues in the Region are identified:

Access to and quality of natural resources (primarily water and land, but also forest and more generally biodiversity resources);

Existing or potential pollution from industrial facilities, hazardous and radioactive waste sites;

And cross-cutting issues such as natural disasters, climate change, public health, environmental governance, public participation and access to information.

Tien-Shan Mountains

Central Asia - From Rio 1992 to 2012 and beyound: Sustainable Development, ZOI Environment Network, 2011

Environment and Security in the Amudarya River Basin, UNEP Grid Arendal, 2011

Transforming Risks into Cooperation - Central Asia, Environment and Security Initiative, UNEP Grid Arendal, 2005

Environmental scarcity arising either when the quality and quantity of renewable resources decreases (supply-induced scarcity), the population increases (demand-induced scarcity), and/or when resource access becomes more unequal (structural scarcity) (Homer-Dixon, 1999 in ENVSEC 2011).

Environmental scarcity, in turn, can produce five types of social effects: constrained agricultural productivity; constrained economic productivity; migration of affected people; greater segmentation of society, usually along existing ethnic cleavages; and disruption of institutions, especially the state (in Marais et al., 2003: 14 in ENVSEC 2011).

Ecological marginalization when unequal resource access and population growth combine to drive further degradation of renewable resources (ENVSEC, 2011).