Central Asia Gets Wired

Surge in E-mail Use Helps Environmentalists Combat Isolation and Censorship

by Adriana Dakin & drawing by Golliver

Although the Soviet Union officially ceased to exist some six years ago, its policies of restricting information and outright censorship continue to shape the lives and work of environmentalists in Central Asia. Electronic mail (e-mail) technology has become an essential source of ideas, external contact and information. Although e-mail may seem minor in the context of the enormous environmental and social problems facing Central Asia-desertification and soil salinization, antiquated technology, intense competition for scarce financial resources, and pollution from agriculture, industry and nuclear reactors-the significance of uncensored communication is huge.

Although numerous organizations in Central Asia do not have e-mail, the contemporary understanding of the green movement increasingly takes for granted that organizations have relatively easy access to information and communication with other organizations and funders, as Lyuba Luniova of the Environmental Cooperation Bulletin commented. The significance of e-mail grows rapidly as its users increase in number and activity. Since e-mail becomes more valuable the more people who use it, use should continue to increase provided that those who want e-mail can find funding or free service.

Some activists believe electronic communication will lessen intense competition and build cooperation between environmental organizations in Central Asia, as has happened in Russia, where environmental organizations are more firmly established and communicate more with each other. Volodya Shestakov, the first independent environmental activist in the Soviet Union to use e-mail, says that the technology has radically changed the face of the environmental movement in Russia. "It allows [activists] to know what is happening around them, to keep abreast of events and assessments." These effects are being seen in Central Asia as well.

Before the widespread use of e-mail, Luniova commented, contacts between environmental activists occurred haphazardly, mostly at conferences, and organizations knew little about each other. The fast and easily accessible communication e-mail provides allows organizations to learn about foundation competitions and send their applications electronically. As few NGOs are financially sustainable, these possibilities have opened the door to increased contact with funding sources.

In Tajikistan, where civil war and economic collapse have made communication difficult, NGO activists from Dushanbe assert that e-mail is the only practical way for them to communicate. Muazama Burkanova of the Foundation to Support Civic Initiatives said, "The significance of electronic mail for ecological NGOs is invaluable. In the situation of economic and social crisis of the post-Soviet period, electronic mail has helped people to unite, to carry on a continuous dialogue, to make decisions, to satisfy the hunger for information. The introduction of electronic mail is one of the most important and serious acts against the 'iron curtain' between the former USSR and the rest of the world." According to Yuri Skochilov and Timur Idrisov of the School for Environmental Education in Tajikistan, organizations that have e-mail connections strengthen their inter-group relationships.

Turkmenistan: Isolation and Information Hunger

Of the five Central Asian republics, Turkmenistan's NGOs are the most isolated due to the country's totalitarian government and harsh topographic boundaries. Turkmenistan is politically repressive, yet environmental NGOs, with the help of funding and technical support from international organizations such as ISAR and the Sacred Earth Network, have been successful in beginning to establish e-mail resources.

E-mail access has become widely available to environmental NGOs in Turkmenistan only in the past year, expanding with the help of foreign financial aid and expertise. Its use has already made a significant impact on the work of environmental NGOs there. In the words of Valentina Marochkina of the Amu Darya Ecology Group in the remote town of Seidi, "If it weren't for e-mail, we would be practically isolated, because we rarely-once every one or two months-receive information from Moscow." Subscription to foreign publications is strictly limited, and there are only eight local newspapers and journals. By allowing geographically and politically isolated environmental activists access to information, and thereby circumventing government censorship, e-mail has enabled NGOs in Ashgabat and several remote towns in Turkmenistan to begin to stabilize their haphazard communication and knowledge exchange.

The Ashgabat ecology club Catena, established in 1994, has been an active player in NGO electronic communication development in Turkmenistan. One important aspect of the organization's work has been to establish e-mail stations in several remote towns, such as Seidi, Turkmenbashi and Kara-Kala. At these stations, local NGOs can work on a computer and send e-mail. Although many acknowledged that more communications equipment and training would be helpful to organizations, compared to years past the number of computers and modems seems considerable.

Catena's Ecolink project, organized in conjunction with the Sacred Earth Network and financed by ISAR, has given free access to environmental NGOs in several parts of Turkmenistan, while remaining financially sustainable by charging private business users a competitive fee. Currently the server has more than 100 users, 40 of whom are commercial, and NGO use is constantly increasing. Although the Ecolink project ended in the spring of 1997, Catena has continued to extend e-mail access, and has begun teleconferences and Internet development. As Turkmenistan has no access to the World Wide Web, the organization's members download electronic bulletins and other news when they visit other countries and make these accessible on-line through their own server. Plans for the future include establishing a local web server so that NGOs can create pages about their activities.

Although there are problems such as frequent power outages, poor phone-line quality and scarce financial resources needed to pay for e-mail access and training, e-mail has become the most reliable form of communication in Turkmenistan. According to Andrei Aranbaev of Catena, "All the other communication technologies for receiving and exchanging information-post, telephone, telegraph, television-hardly work. A large part of the information which is accessible to us (NGOs) comes through e-mail." Letters, journals and teleconferences "would be simply inaccessible without e-mail."

Marochkina uses a metaphor to describe the sense of isolation and information hunger that has been prevalent in Turkmenistan: "When we did not have e-mail, we felt that we were standing on the shore of a stormy, contemporary river of information, from which spray sometimes reached us. Only a huge desire to be more informed pushed us to scrape up money from our salaries through a grant from ISAR and to buy a modem. I remember the big problems we had when we were dealing with trying to understand how to use the electronic connection. One of the biggest problems was our isolation."

The language of communication, in a communications system dominated by English, is an issue for many in Turkmenistan. Knowledge of English, activists in Turkmenistan responded, is one of the most important conditions for effective work on the Internet and interaction with foreign NGOs through e-mail. Andrei Zatoka's organization, the Dashowuz Ecology Club, has taken steps to increase their English ability.

"Our knowledge of English is definitely not adequate," he said. "Therefore in our club we have organized English lessons with the help of Peace Corps volunteers." When necessary, however, organizations can use a computer language translator, and there is a growing amount of information on the environment in Russian. There was a general consensus that what is most important is that a person is communicative and responsive, and what language used is secondary.

The Sacred Earth Network's Susan Cutting, an influential actor in the development of e-mail networks throughout the former Soviet Union, said that many NGO representatives who have been cut off for so long from free-flowing information "have not become accustomed to the 'culture' of quick and effective communication." Cutting noted that personal initiative and responsiveness are at least as vital to telecommunications improvement as availability and technical capabilities.

While acknowledging the positive changes that use of e-mail has encouraged, Marochkina has noticed that many FSU environmental NGO representatives respond more slowly than her foreign colleagues, or avoid answering questions altogether. For the first time in their lives, these people have the capability to quickly and cheaply communicate across large distances, but in many cases they are still unaccustomed to being able to correspond as efficiently as e-mail allows.

Several environmental activists emphasized that while e-mail is simply a means of communication, the way in which e-mail has begun to influence organizations' work in Turkmenistan has made it an invaluable tool. Marochkina's organization uses their electronic resources to assist organizations and schoolchildren to learn about events outside their usual sphere of knowledge. The organization also assists remote nature reserves in obtaining important information for their work by printing publications for dissemination.

Several Turkmenistani interviewees said that e-mail is the only means that NGOs have to encourage cooperation and partnership among themselves and with donors. However, according to Aranbaev, "In several instances, possession of e-mail leads to the acquisition of excessive authority by an organization. This leads to the beginnings of dependence of other organizations on the organization with e-mail. This in turn can lead to conflicts between NGOs. The only way to circumvent this is by every NGO having access to e-mail."

Marochkina said that continued and increased outside financial support for telecommunications is necessary, as most organizations do not have a sustainable source of income. Zatoka suggested that financial support be dependent on the recipient groups working cooperatively together. He saw a need to guarantee that, for example, if four groups work in one community, they will not fight over computer and e-mail resources. If they do not conform to the conditions of the agreement, the equipment should be taken back, he said.

As activists in Central Asia and Russia related, e-mail is a practical as well as a developmental influence for environmental organizations. Joint projects have become increasingly possible through frequent e-mail contact. Many activists also feel responsible for sharing the wealth of information available on environmental issues with those who do not have e-mail.

Internet technology allows users from every part of the world to be peers, enabling activists in countries as politically repressive and geographically isolated as Turkmenistan to interact and receive information limited only by their ability to express themselves and define what they wish to know. E-mail is only a means of transmission, yet its refreshingly anarchistic characteristics encourage debate and the growth of cooperation and information sharing. In the newly independent countries of Central Asia, which still hunger for more information, the global electronic network counteracts political censorship and isolation.

Adriana Dakin worked in ISAR's Almaty office this summer. She wishes to thank Susan Cutting of the Sacred Earth Network for her help in providing recommendations for people to contact throughout Central Asia and thinking about issues and concepts surrounding electronic communication in Central Asia. Catena, 8a Repin Street, Ashgabat 744005, Turkmenistan; phone: (99312) 47-32-85, fax: (99312) 39-51-80, e-mail: timchik@cat.glasnet.ru