Aral Sea donor assessment meeting held in Almaty

In an effort to review ongoing humanitarian operations underway in the region's impoverished Aral Sea area, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on Wednesday hosted a round table on donor activities in the Kazakh commercial capital Almaty. The round table was organized by the Kyzyl-Orda province governorship with UNDP's support. "More than US $82 million has been invested in the development of the Aral Sea region in the form of grants and loans over the past 10 years," Aida Karazhanova, a senior programme assistant of UNDP's environment unit, told IRIN from Almaty, adding that the projects in the Kyzyl-Orda province, included environmental protection, poverty reduction, governance and civic society development. UNDP's report “Ten Years of Donor Activities in the Aral Sea Region and Priority Projects Portfolio for Kyzyl-Orda oblast (province)" released the same day, presented an overview of various donor activities, their cooperation with the Kazakh government and among themselves, along with an analysis of best practices and recommendations for future activity in the Aral Sea region. Karazhanova said that one of the key points discussed at the round table was the efficiency of the aid, as well as its positive impacts and shortcomings. "The situation on the ground has been changing and in some districts of the Kyzyl-Orda province there has been an improvement in water supply facilities," she said. Representatives of the Kazakh government, UN agencies, the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, INTAS [INTAS is an independent International Association formed by the European Community], the Kazakh Ministry of Agriculture, the Kazakh Academy of Sciences, the Islamic Development Bank, the Japanese embassy, a variety of other development organisations, as well as some national NGOs and private sector representatives, took an active part in the round table where they reviewed and discussed priority projects for the region.

The situation with regard to water supply in some districts of Kyzyl-Orda province is said to have improved

Commenting on the shortcomings reflected in the report, Karazhanova cited the lack of coordination and information between the various parties. "There was insufficient coordination between donors and the government, as well as a lack of information between the donors on what they were doing," she claimed, noting that local authorities had limited capacity to maintain projects. She went on to add, however, that all the parties aired their proposals on how to improve their activities so as to achieve better results in the future. Once the fourth largest lake in world, the demise of the Aral Sea has been described as one of the worst ecological and environmental disasters of the century. In an effort to turn Central Asia into the Soviet Union's cotton region, central planners in Moscow diverted the flow of the sea's two main feeder rivers - the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya - in the 1970s. Since then, the sea's demise has had clear environmental, economic and health implications for millions living in the area. The Aral Sea basin contains some 35 million people, with 3.5 million of them living in the disaster zone which encompasses most of the Karakalpakstan and Khhorezm region of Uzbekistan, the northern regions of Dashowuz in Turkmenistan and the south-central Kazakh province of Kyzyl-Orda.