On April 9, 2015, Dushanbe hosted an international conference “Adaptation to Climate Change in Central Asia: Increasing sustainability through adaptation measures based on the ecosystem approach."
The conference, organized by GIZ on behalf of the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety, in the framework of the regional program “Development of capacity in climate policy in the Western Balkans, Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia” was primarily intended to raise awareness and develop a common understanding among policy makers in Central Asia, and development partners on the concept of ecosystem adaptation.
The conference was attended by representatives of ministries, scientists and NGOs from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.
Regional Environmental Center for Central Asia was presented at the conference as the major regional stakeholders working on the topic of Ecosystem Services in the region. CAREC took active participation in the working session in group where Prof. Kayumov was rapporteur for the Tajik group;
Following the conference the Dushanbe Declaration on adaptation was designed, based on an ecosystem approach.
The conference was the starting point of an upcoming project financed by International Climate Initiative of Germany (IKI) on ecosystem based adaptation of high mountain areas in the context of climate change. The partners for this project are: GIZ, the University of Central Asia, the Succow foundation, UNIQUE GmbH and CAMP Alatoo.
On April 10th was held an internal meeting between the project partners, and although CAREC is not officially among those, our role was underlined as very important in terms of field and technical expertise. There will be several pilot territories identified within the project and some of them could overlap our pilot areas, thus allowing cooperation.
Mr. Keinhorst of the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety has specifically underlined the high professional capacities of CAREC and their support to our organization in the coming years.