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Paper short abstract:

This paper presents the protean Kök zhajlau environmental movement that has spread between 2011 and 2019, against a project of a ski resort in the south of Kazakstan whose origins date back to 2001 and whose shadow has not yet completely faded.

Paper long abstract:

This paper presents this protean movement that has spread between 2011 and 2019, against a project whose origins date back to 2001 and whose shadow has not yet completely faded. This work is based on interviews conducted with many actors of the movement, press articles and sources available on the internet. The project, which was repeatedly reformulated by the Kazakhstani authorities, had the goal of constructing to construct a large ski resort near the city of Almaty including the establishment of a residential area and essential infrastructures. The Kök zhajlau plateau is an accessible and popular walking area, a nature reserve that is part of the Ile-Alatau National Park as well as a summer pasture-land (zhajlau). We will look at how this movement forms part of mountain hiking and trekking practices which had been largely promoted by the Soviet power and was seized by the population. The aim is to show the relationship between government policies and practices and aspirations within civil society. The attention will then be focused on the form of the movement which joined together a great diversity of actors without a leader nor organizations centralizing the initiatives and the actions. The nature of the Kazakhstani regime and the relative weakness of environmental and social mobilizations had an influence on the construction of the movement in this unstructured form, but this context also resulted in the combination of a great diversity of competences and commitment. It opened to numerous contestations on the basis that the project did not comply with Kazakhstani laws, international conventions, and to criticisms as to the viability of the project. This movement succeeded in taking up a very large place in the public space despite the efforts of the authorities, and created a vision of environmental activism in connection with central issues for Kazakhstan, namely corruption and the creation of a national identity through a relationship to the land and the conservation of environmental heritage. This movement, which obtained the official ban of the construction by the president of Kazakhstan Kasym-zhomart Tokaev in 2019, involved many people who were sensitized to environmental issues and also gave rise to various initiatives and a sharing of experiences with current movements in other regions, such as Astana or Manghystau.