From Helsinki to the algorithm: how Switzerland practises anticipation in Central Asia
On 7 and 8 May 2026, as part of its OSCE Chairpersonship, Switzerland will be hosting the conference ‘Anticipating technologies – for a safe and humane future’ in Geneva. Combining scientific forecasting with diplomatic practice in Central Asia – to improve transboundary water security – is something SDC has been doing for over two decades. It is precisely the point under discussion at the conference.
A priority with an operational track record
‘Anticipating technologies – for a safe and humane future’ is one of the five priorities of Switzerland's 2026 OSCE Chairpersonship. SDC has been promoting this approach for decades. Through its SAPPHIRE and Blue Peace programmes, it puts this approach into practice in Central Asia – and is part of the conference taking place on 7 and 8 May 2026 in Geneva.
In the Helsinki Final Act, which laid the foundations of today's Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in August 1975, the participating States recorded that scientific and technological cooperation plays a key role in strengthening security. Switzerland's 2026 OSCE Chairpersonship picks up exactly this point: Federal Councillor Ignazio Cassis has made the ‘anticipation of technologies’ one of the five priorities, aimed at combining scientific and diplomatic tools so that emerging technologies build trust rather than division.
For SDC, this is not a theoretical position. For more than two decades, in one of the world's most water-politically sensitive regions – Central Asia – SDC has been working on how technological innovation and diplomatic practice concretely interlock. Three themes illustrate what anticipation means in practice.
Data and early warning: the SAPPHIRE programme
Five States – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan – share two large transboundary river systems, the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya, whose headwaters lie in the Tien Shan and Pamir mountain ranges. Climate change, population growth and intensive irrigation agriculture are putting these rivers under increasing pressure. The reality of the shrinking Aral Sea is not a historical warning, but a continuing reminder of what happens when transboundary water systems are over-exploited without cooperative governance.
Through the SAPPHIRE Central Asia programme – short for ‘Smart and Precise Prognostic Hydrology for Innovative Risk Management and Resource Use Efficiency’ – SDC supports the modernisation of national hydrometeorological services across the region. In partnership with the Swiss tech company Hydrosolutions in Zurich, a spin-off of ETH Zurich, open-source tools are being developed that translate high-frequency sensor data into daily probabilistic discharge forecasts. In Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, the system already delivers operational forecasts; in 2025, a memorandum of understanding with Kazhydromet, Kazakhstan's hydrometeorological service, and an implementation agreement with Turkmenistan were signed, opening the way for further expansion to these two countries as well.
The advantages of this work are that such systems have direct security impacts: those who know earlier and more precisely what water volumes are coming can negotiate allocation more effectively, prepare for floods, and prevent conflicts over scarce resources.
Water diplomacy: Blue Peace Central Asia
Yet data alone does not produce peace. Through Blue Peace Central Asia – now in its second phase since 2025 – SDC focuses on the political processing of that data. Implemented by a consortium consisting of the International Water Management Institute, the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the Regional Environmental Centre for Central Asia, the project promotes regional water diplomacy, technical cooperation at the basin level and institutional trust.
In practical terms, this means regular regional working groups on water quality, joint policy dialogues among the five capitals, and demonstrative pilot projects on transboundary tributaries. Blue Peace's overarching idea, pursued for over a decade: to transform water from a potential source of conflict into an instrument of cooperation.
The generation of tomorrow
Anticipation that aims to be sustainable needs institutional depth. The third theme invests in those water professionals who will bear responsibility in twenty years: a regional Master's programme in water diplomacy is being developed jointly with universities in the five countries; trainings for educators are running at 21 Central Asian universities, including the region's diplomatic academies and academies of public administration.
Swiss universities are closely involved – the University of Geneva contributes teaching content on the water-energy-food nexus, the University of Fribourg supports glaciological research in the Tien Shan, and ETH Zurich is connected through academic cooperation. Geneva's water-diplomacy tradition, embodied by the Geneva Water Hub, provides a natural anchor.
What converges on 7 May
What these three themes show together is a particular understanding of anticipation: not a technological discipline alone, but the combination of three ingredients – precise data, political practice and institutional continuity. It is exactly this combination that lies at the heart of the OSCE conference Switzerland is hosting in Geneva on 7 and 8 May.
It is not a coincidence that the conference will begin at CERN and conclude at the ICRC: both institutions embody the specifically Genevan tradition in which science and diplomacy are not separate spheres but spaces that mutually enable each other. SDC brings to this constellation its field work – not as theory, but as two decades of real-world experience of what happens when data, diplomacy and education meet in a geopolitically sensitive region.
This is precisely the way Switzerland sees the trinity of its 2026 OSCE Chairpersonship: dialogue, trust and security. In Central Asia, it is being practised. In Geneva, on 7 and 8 May, it will become visible.
Links
- Switzerland's 2026 OSCE Chairpersonship
- Conference ‘Anticipating technologies’
- Blue Peace Central Asia
Documents
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