Reported by 24.kg at 09:30 Bishkek, the decree is a mandate without a balance sheet. The fund is to raise money from international organisations, foreign states, climate funds, financial institutions and donors, and spend it on glaciers and water resources, the Issyk-Kul ecosystem, water-saving technology and monitoring. The cabinet has until 1 October 2026 to define its legal form, its sources of financing, its governance, how it selects projects and how it reports and is audited. It takes effect in 10 days.
Three ministries share it. The Ministry of Water Resources, Agriculture and Processing Industry coordinates the fund's creation; the Ministry of Natural Resources, Ecology and Technical Supervision takes the lake; the Ministry of Emergency Situations takes the glaciers, their monitoring and research.
The price was published on 3 September, when the environment ministry put a draft cabinet resolution approving the National Adaptation Plan to 2035 out for public discussion on koomtalkuu.gov.kg. It runs from 2026 to 2035 and lists about 676 measures in 19 areas. Its preliminary financing: 39.9 billion som (54%) from international grants and climate funds, 16.6 billion (22%) from the republican budget, 10.6 billion (14%) from local budgets and 7.4 billion (10%) from the private sector.
The diagnosis in the plan is a hydrologist's. Mean annual temperature rose 0.28°C a decade between 1981 and 2020; glaciated area has shrunk 16 to 17% since 2001, and the plan projects a further loss of more than a third by 2050. The lakes are the warning. Glacial lakes in the northern Tien Shan have increased by 30%, the peak of river flow now comes about 50 days earlier than it did, and of the 986 emergencies recorded from 2015 to 2022, 31% were mudflows and floods. In 2024, 26% of the water taken from natural sources was lost in transport.
The foreign half is the half that is not yet there.
The bill without the plan is the plan's own argument. Without adaptation, it says, losses reach 2 to 3% of GDP a year by 2040 and 4.2% by 2050; about 170,000 more people fall below the poverty line by 2040; by mid-century 24% of demand for irrigation water goes unmet; flood and landslide damage to infrastructure rises 41 to 72% by 2050. The World Bank's figure for adaptation needs, cited in the plan, is about $950 million for 2025 to 2050.
The targets are set in hectares. Water losses in irrigation systems down by at least 30%; 150,000 hectares of farmland moved to water-saving technology; degraded pasture cut from 42% to 30% of the total; 150,000 hectares of degraded forest and watershed restored; early-warning systems for 90% of the settlements in climate-risk zones.
The foreign half is the half that is not yet there. The Green Climate Fund's current portfolio in Kyrgyzstan is seven projects worth about $149 million, The Times of Central Asia reported on Monday; the plan's ten-year ask of grants and climate funds is 39.9 billion som, about $456 million at Tuesday's rate. At the Climate Finance Summit in Istanbul on 4 and 5 September, Dinara Kemelova, the president's special representative for the mountain agenda, asked for more finance for developing countries and easier access to the climate funds; Bishkek's proposals at the summit, in the same account, included debt swaps for green projects and a Global Centre for Climate Resilience of Mountain Regions headquartered in Bishkek.
Then the claim on the neighbours. Bishkek has proposed that neighbouring countries contribute to the financing of water infrastructure and glacier preservation, on the ground that a significant share of the water rising in Kyrgyzstan's mountains is used beyond its borders, The Times of Central Asia wrote in the same piece. The plan puts no number on it.
That is the new part of an old bargain. The Soviet exchange gave the lowlands summer water for cotton and sent winter fuel back up to the mountains; the independent version, where one exists, is a tariff on electricity, as in the 20-year contract under which Tashkent buys Rogun's power at 3.4 cents a kilowatt-hour. A fund that collects for ice is a third form: the upstream state as custodian of a shared asset, invoicing the downstream for its upkeep. The decree creates the counter; the plan writes the price tag; 1 October is when the cabinet has to say who pays first.