On Thursday, 20 March, the Steering Committee of the Kyrgyz National Policy Dialogue on water resources discussed an expert assessment of the state of water reservoirs in the basin, along with a wide range of policies and projects in field of water.
The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) is supporting the step-by-step development of the Chu River Basin Management Plan, including the creation of the database that provided the framework for the recent assessment. Many dams on the reservoirs in the Chu Basin are poorly maintained and pose a potential risk for downstream populations. The creation of the database on the state of the existing dams will help to prioritize which are most at risk of failure and need to be repaired first. A common approach to the categorization of reservoirs for irrigation and hydropower generation — as was done in the present assessment — will be very useful also for the development of management plans in other basins.
It is foreseen that a World Bank project will step in to complete the Chu River Basin Management Plan, which was started with UNECE support a few years ago.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), another strategic partner of the National Policy Dialogues, proposed a set of different economic instruments to increase the efficiency of water use in Kyrgyzstan.
Over 30 representatives of different stakeholders and donors involved in improving the situation of water resources in Kyrgyzstan attended the meeting, which was chaired by the Deputy Head of the Department of Water Management and Melioration of the Ministry of Agriculture and Melioration, Mr. Tilek Isabekov.
The meeting was attended by many international institutions and donors to ensure coordination of their activities in the water sector in Kyrgyzstan. Participating donors included the Asian Development Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the European Union, the Finnish Environmental Institute, the German Agency for International Cooperation, OECD, the Swiss Cooperation Office, UNECE, the United Nations Development Programme and the World Bank.
Note to editors:
National Policy Dialogues (NPDs) on Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) and Water Supply and Sanitation are the main operational instrument of the European Union Water Initiative (EUWI) Component for Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia. UNECE is the strategic partner for support to the policy dialogue processes on IWRM.
NPDs are under way in the following countries of the region: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Republic of Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Ukraine. More information is available at: www.unece.org/env/water/npd.