Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 27
By Fakhri Vakilov - Trend:
European Investment Bank (EIB) and the Ministry of Investments and Foreign Trade of Uzbekistan signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in Tashkent on September 27, paving the way for an investment program worth 100 million euros, designed to combine international efforts to restore the Aral Sea, Trend reports citing the Uzbek media.
As an EU Bank to support climate change programs, the EIB will support the Government of Uzbekistan in achieving one of its national priorities and protect the environment in the Aral Sea region, where about 1.8 million people live, and facilitate the transition to a greener economy.
The EIB plans a two-tier investment program for the Aral Sea, which in 1970 was the fourth largest body of water on Earth. At the first level, obsolete irrigation systems in the Amudarya River Valley, which is the main source of water for the Aral Sea, will be restored and modernized. The second will restore agricultural land in the area, degraded over decades by salinization, and now covered with salt due to inadequate use of the Soviet-style irrigation system for decades.
These two measures will reduce the amount of water that is currently being taken from the Amu Darya River for irrigation, and will allow the river to bring more water into the Aral Sea. The EIB support will also allow Uzbekistan to stop further environmental damage in the Aral Sea region and mitigate the negative climatic, environmental, economic and social effects of extensive and inadequate irrigation in the Uzbek part of the Aral Sea basin. The partnership will help create a more sustainable, environmentally friendly economy in Uzbekistan.
Since the 1960s, the environmental situation around the Aral Sea has been deteriorating, which affects the living and economic conditions of communities in the Amudarya River Valley, the Uzbek region of Karakalpakstan, where negative climatic and environmental consequences spread throughout the world, far beyond the borders of Uzbekistan.
After the MoU, the next step to the investment program will be the approval of the EIB loan. Once approved and signed, the program will be implemented in partnership with the Government of Uzbekistan and the European Union through The Multi-Partner Human Security Trust Fund for the Aral Sea Region (MPHSTF), jointly created by the UN and Uzbekistan. The fund will coordinate the flow of assistance in the region.
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