Chairman of Executive Committee of International Fund for Saving Aral Sea addresses OSCE Permanent Council, calls for effective regional co-operation

VIENNA, 29 July 2010 - Addressing the OSCE Permanent Council today, the Chairman of the Executive Committee of the International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea (IFAS) Sagit Ibatullin stressed the need of more effective co-operation between all countries in the region to ensure preventive responses to environmental threats in the Aral Sea Basin.

"There is no other region in the OSCE area where the problems of environmental security would be more acute than in the Central Asia," Ibatullin said. He noted that shrinking of the Aral Sea is one of the most pressing problems: today, the surface area of the Sea is 13,000 square km or 17 percent of what was registered in 1961, and the water volume has decreased to 90 cubic km - 9 percent of the 1961 volume.

Ibatullin noted that political changes in the region, notably the disintegration of the Soviet Union, "broke the quite sustainable system of water and energy exchange that existed between the countries of the region, and they have faced a threat of national food and energy security". He warned that the competition for water between the countries of the region and between different industries could increase in the future.

Ibatullin named climate change, degradation of water and land resources and population growth as key challenges faced by Central Asian countries in their joint work on water resources management, including in the IFAS framework.

Ibatullin noted the constructive co-operation between the IFAS Directorate in Kazakhstan and the OSCE within the framework of a Memorandum of Understanding on water security. A pilot project under this agreement on the introduction of integrated water management in Kazakhstan's part of the Aral Sea Basin is now underway.

Discussing the potential of the regional co-operation on Aral Sea problems, Ibatullin quoted Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev: "Kazakhstan's OSCE Chairmanship enables the countries of the region to highlight the Aral Sea problem and to try to establish a full-fledged dialogue on this in the framework of this largest regional organization. We believe that one of the practical solutions within the OSCE framework could be an initiative to create mechanisms for monitoring and ensuring preventive response to environmental threats".

Ibatullin called on the OSCE participating States to support the initiative and provide financial and technical assistance in the development and implementation of the regional projects to strengthen regional security in Central Asia. He expressed hope that Kazakhstan's Chairmanship in the OSCE and in the IFAS "will allow for a successful foundation to be laid, and ensure the necessary political momentum for a sustainable and comprehensive process to strengthen regional co-operation in Central Asia."

IFAS was established in 1993. It is the only political platform in the region uniting all five Central Asian countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan). The Fund is developing an Action Programme on assisting the countries of the Aral Sea basin for the period of 2011-2015, aimed in particular at the integrated use of water resources taking in the account the interests of all states in the region.