OSCE Centre in Astana helps to enhance water co-operation

ALMATY, Kazakhstan, 29 May 2012 – Sixty policy and decision makers, legal and technical experts, and academia and non-governmental organizations representatives from Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia are taking part in a workshop on groundwater management which started today in Almaty.

The three-day event co-organized by the OSCE Centre in Astana, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Kazakhstani non-governmental Centre for Sustainable Development Co-operation aims to improve regulatory, institutional and methodological frameworks for the integrated management of transboundary groundwaters at the bilateral and multilateral levels.

“Water shortages have been recognized by the OSCE as a factor that can contribute or lead to instability and conflicts,” said Alexander Peytchev, the Economic and Environmental Officer of the OSCE Centre in Astana. “Through this workshop we aim to help find comprehensive solutions to the transboundary challenge of managing groundwaters, thus enhancing environmental security and economic stability.”

“We welcome such workshops, and support them as an opportunity to discuss the importance of groundwaters for effective water resource management, and the need to conduct an aquifer inventory,” said Mukhtar Zhakenov, Head of the Water Resources Regulation, Use and Protection Department of Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Agriculture. “This year Kazakhstan will begin to use state funds to monitor its groundwaters, and for this reason it is particularly useful to familiarize ourselves with international experience in this area.”

The project is a follow-up to earlier OSCE Centre activities on developing the legal and institutional framework for transboundary groundwater management.