From: Justin Burke (JBurke@sorosny.org)
Date: Mon Oct 23 2000 - 12:54:13 EDT
Uzbekistan focuses efforts on water resources management
Text of report by the Uzbek newspaper 'Narodnoye Slovo'
[Newspaper headline] Water Conservation Strategy
A strategy for forming Uzbek public opinion on managing water resources and
the environment has been presented at the National Press Centre. The
meeting was initiated by a national working group of Uzbekistan and the
BDPA international consultancy group (France) [possibly the Office for the
Development of Agricultural Production, in French: Bureau pour le
développement de la production agricole (BDPA)].
The BDPA company won the World Bank international tender and now, in close
cooperation with the NWG (National Working Group) of the Central Asian
countries and the Global Environment Facility, is carrying out a training
programme on the rational use of water resources.
It is not accidental that efforts are currently concentrated on this field.
The ecological crisis in the Aral Sea region is a problem not only for the
countries of the Central Asian Region. It has assumed a global scale. A
huge desert, the Aralkum [Aral sands], with an area of 33,400 sq km has
formed on the site of the former [Aral] sea and engendered problems of a
social, medical and economic nature which cannot but worry the
international community. In his address at the UN Millennium Summit,
President Islam Karimov [of Uzbekistan] recalled and expressed his great
concern about this.
The strategy which has been worked out so far, and which is due to be
implemented up to 2002 and beyond, envisages tackling urgent regional
problems: management of water resources, security of dams and management of
reservoirs, monitoring of transborder waters and restoring marshland areas.
Progressive technologies for rational use of water resources in the Aral Sea
basin are being proposed in order to resolve the above issues. [p1]
Source: 'Narodnoye Slovo', Tashkent, in Russian 21 Oct 00 p1
BBC Mon CAU 211000/** va/ad
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