ASTANA, Kazakhstan, December 12. Kazakhstan calls on the international community to support efforts to preserve the Caspian Sea, the country's President, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, said at the International Peace and Trust Forum in Ashgabat, Trend reports.
According to the head of state, at the current rate of shallowing, this dangerous process could become irreversible, which would inevitably cause a chain reaction of environmental, socio-economic, and even political consequences.
"Kazakhstan has taken the initiative to develop a special intergovernmental program aimed at preventing the destruction of the ecosystem and the shallowing of the Caspian Sea. We call on the entire international community to support our efforts to preserve this unique body of water. In general, in my opinion, water diplomacy requires close intergovernmental coordination. Existing international institutions tend to act in isolation, within narrow mandates, which is not commensurate with the scale of growing water problems," Tokayev noted.
The president also emphasized that there is no specialized structure within the UN system focused exclusively on water issues.
“Therefore, Kazakhstan proposes to establish an international water organization that could consolidate all existing mandates of various UN organizations. The optimal option would be to transform the inter-agency mechanism UNWATER into a full-fledged specialized agency or UN organization,” Tokayev said.