Kyrgyzstan has plenty of praise for the results of its experiments to date with artificial glaciers, or “ice towers”, so much so that it is offering to provide assistance to neighbouring fellow mountainous country Tajikistan in helping it to get started with the “climate action” technology.

The structures, as reported by Asia-Plus, store invaluable water in frozen form during the winter, ready for melted release during the summer months, especially in the event of less than adequate rainfall. With natural glaciers dissolving at a rapid rate as a result of the climate crisis, artificial glaciers could become increasingly prominent and important.

The impact of artificial glaciers was explained during the session “Activating Global Action to Enhance Glacier Resilience: Civil Society Experiences in Central Asia,” held as part of the International Conference on Glacier Conservation in the Tajik capital Dushanbe between May 29 and June 1.

Oleg Guchgeldiev, Kyrgyzstan’s representative at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said that each ice tower required between $3,000 and $4,000 in expenditure and can store up to 50,000 cubic metres of water for provision to localities including remote, arid regions where traditional water sources have become patchy and unreliable.

Kyrgyzstan’s first ice tower was constructed in 2022 in Jalal-Abad. There are now around 30 in the country.

Seven have been built in Batken region. Four more are planned for construction in Batken and Leylek before the end of this year.

In making an ice tower, water from springs is directed via an underground pipeline to a vertical pipe that rises by up to 20 metres. During winter-time, water is sprayed from the pipe. It freezes, thereby forming an ice tower that can grow to 30 to 50 metres in height.

Tajikistan’s President Emomali Rahmon led a successful campaign at the UN General Assembly to declare 2025 the International Year of Glacier Conservation.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) says Central Asia could suffer the loss of more than half its glaciers by 2050. Such a loss would put the water security of more than 64mn people in peril. Water from mountainous, upstream Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan flows into rivers that provide indispensable water supplies to downstream Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan.