Аннотация:
This thesis focuses on how Kazakhstan used environment as a foreign policy tool and
how the environmental foreign policy is articulated in yearly presidential addresses. I am
interested whether environmental issues are in fact on the foreign policy agenda and what are
the objectives and means by which environment is put on forward. Why Kazakhstan is a
signatory to a list of environmental treaties, but is continuously found not to comply?
Addressing this broader question brings to asking more specific theoretical questions. What
are the domestic political constraints that preclude Kazakhstan’s environmentalism from
being instrumental rather than rhetorical? Who is the intended audience of Kazakhstan’s well
stated environmental rhetoric?
Kazakhstan’s environmental foreign policy is articulated in yearly presidential
addresses and implemented in light of the state’s multi-vector foreign policy. Building on
existing research and analysis of the yearly presidential addresses, this thesis finds that
foreign policy and policy preferences in general are delivered in yearly presidential addresses.
Channeling foreign policy by means of presidential addresses allows the state to advocate its
interests, meet public expectations and strengthen the existing political regime.
To understand why Kazakhstan is a signatory to a number of environmental treaties
without compliance, I conducted process-tracing of governmental documents and local news
coverage of the state’s environmental initiatives. Then I contrasted the local environmental
rhetoric to what is being said by international organizations. To conceptualize and then
analyze the government’s environmental messaging to domestic audience, I studied yearly
presidential addresses to the people of Kazakhstan. Therefore, I used R software to uncover
the message in the presidents’ yearly addresses. On the basis of my findings, I have reached
two conclusions. First, I found that domestic political constraints preclude Kazakhstan’s environmentalism from being instrumental rather than rhetorical. Second, having done a
thorough analysis of the yearly presidential addresses between 1997 and 2019, I found that
Kazakhstan’s environmental foreign policy is targeting domestic audience rather than
international audience. Overall I find that Kazakhstan’s eagerness to join international
environmental treaties and conventions is the result of the state’s attempts to promote regime
friendly images and solidify the state legitimacy.
In other words, Kazakhstan exploits its foreign policy as a tool to shape the identity of
its citizens by means of glorification of the policy and the first president’s personality.
Likewise the state’s consequent reluctance to implement changes to the environmental
legislation is the result of domestic political constraints, and it is the state’s attempts to
reconcile the diverse interests of domestic actors through glorifying the regime in yearly
presidential addresses.