Whose World? Discourses of Protection for Land, Environment, and Natural Resources in Kazakhstan

In Kazakhstan today, overt dissent is not typically tolerated. However, recent large-scale citizen protests over land use and the environment have resulted in significant concessions by the government. This paper examines the discourses and slogans of protests spaces, which invoke the (inter)national legal frameworks of the United Nations, the legacy of land and bio-species conservation in the former Soviet Union, and a nationalized moral paradigm of respect for ancestral lands, cultural heritage, and sovereignty. Protesters not only call upon government leaders to respect these existing structures of authority, but also position themselves pragmatically as agents of social and political change.