Environment as a Foreign Policy Tool: The Case of Kazakhstan

Abstract

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.