ASTANA. On May 4 the Regional Environmental Centre for Central Asia held a press briefing in preparation for CAIEF 2018. The briefing was attended by the Ambassador of Uzbekistan to Kazakhstan Mr Saidikram Niyazkhodzhaev.
Mr Zulfukhar Zholdasov, Deputy Chairman of the Committee for Environmental Regulation and Control of the Ministry of Energy of the Republic of Kazakhstan opened the event. Mr Zholdasov in his welcoming speech underlined the role of CAREC in promoting environmental cooperation in the Central Asian region.
“For 17 years of its activity, CAREC has been transformed into a regional organization creating and coordinating platforms for cooperation. One of these platforms is the Central Asian International Environmental Forum. The launch of such large-scale dialogue platform contributes to strengthening the regional environmental cooperation, as well as to the future improvement of the Central Asian environment,” concluded Mr Zholdasov.
Further on, Ms Gulmira Imasheva, Head of the Water Resources Management Department of the Water Resources Committee of the Ministry of Agriculture of Kazakhstan noted the importance of CAIEF as a platform for regulating and solving the problems of the region's transboundary rivers.
The Ambassador of Uzbekistan to Kazakhstan, Mr Saidikram Niyazkhodzhaev, presented the program of the forthcoming CAIEF, which will be held in Tashkent on 5-8 of June. In his speech, he spoke about the aims, thematic areas of the forum and the expected results. It is known that in the Central Asian region has a number of challenges in the field of environmental protection which are increasing energy consumption, increasing demand for water, accumulation of solid domestic waste and climate change. The main focus of the forum and CAREC is to assist the countries of Central Asia in addressing these issues.
Moreover, Mr Niyazkhodzhaev stressed the importance of CAREC’s projects which facilitate the improvement of the environmental situation in Central Asia and Afghanistan. Namely, Mr Ambassador mentioned the CAREC-USAID project Smart Waters: "At the moment, the Central Asian countries are implementing USAID project worth about $ 10 million to expand regional cooperation in using shared water resources and improving the environmental situation in the region."
It’s also worth noting that a press briefing was held within the seminar of this project. The event focused on «Qualitative and quantitative status of transboundary waters in the Shu-Talas river basin and issues of equipping of transboundary rivers with gauging stations». Read more about the seminar by the link.