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No. 11 (54) March 2004



“STRATEGIC PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT” PROJECT WORKING MEETING

On 26 February, a working review in regard to the preparation of national proposals for strategic plan for more widely applying IWRM in Ferghana Valley and the Amudarya and Syrdarya river lower reaches was held under the chairmanship of Prof. V.A. Dukhovny.

In the order of the development of measures for applying IWRM strategic planning, the prin-ciples of which were broadly discussed at the meeting in Cholpon-Ata on 26-28 August 2002 and in Tashkent on 26-28 November 2003, a workshop was held on the subject “Development of a strategic plan for implementing IWRM principles in Central Asia” was held by the agreement with the ESCAP.

The workshop participants summarized a positive experience in applying IWRM principles on pilot canals in Ferghana Valley, and made decision on expediency of distributing this experience to all the systems in Ferghana Valley and the Amudarya and Syrdarya river downstream areas.

To this end, SIC ICWC prepared and approved with the ESCAP the TOR for preparing pro-posals under the IWRM principles implementation strategic plan project for national coordina-tors, which was presented to the meeting participants, as well as a Questionnaire, identifying the requirements of TOR positions.

According to these TOR, SIC ICWC received proposals from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, through which the remarks on correcting and supplementing the materials in compliance with the TOR and Questionnaire to it were directed to the executors.

At the review it was noted that:

  • The Kazakh material most fully met the TOR requirements and Questionnaire to it;
  • National coordinators of Turkmenistan did not submit proposals;
  • Regarding all the proposals for IWRM Strategic Planning, the remarks that had been earlier sent to the national coordinators in generalized form were considered;
  • The date of submitting the proposals corrected and supplemented according to remarks was established 15 March this year.

KICK-OFF MEETING OF THE PROJECT “CENTRAL ASIA REGIONAL WATER INFORMATION BASE (CAREWIB)” AND PROJECT STEERING COMMITTEE FIRST MEETING

On 28 February the kick-off meeting was held, in which the representatives from the Scientific-Information Center of ICWC, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), ICWC Secretariat, SIC CSD, UN Economic Commission for Europe, GRID-Arendal, and project national coordinators from all Central Asian republics took part.

At the suggestion of J. Gely (SDC), the kick-off meeting was united with the first meeting of the Project Steering Committee (PSC).

Central Asia Regional Water Information Base Project “CAREWIB” aims at the improvement of information provision in water and environmental sectors in Central Asian countries in order to keep openness and create public opinion for increasing sustainability of development and partnership in the field of rational natural resources use.

One of the project priority tasks is to create a regional Internet portal with regularly updated information on water situation and environmental issues in Central Asia.

The second direction of the project includes creation of a multilevel interstate, intersectoral information system on water and land resources in the Aral Sea basin. The system is based on hierarchical levels of water and land management, as well as on levels of water formation and use. The basic objective of this system is to create — on the basis of modern hardware, software, and telecommunication facilities — a single unified information system that will include data on water formation, development and forecasting, assessment of various aspects of water use, and measures to achieve potential effectiveness, ensure sustainable water management, and improve productivity of economic activities.

It is assuming:

  • water and land resources database is enhanced, including its integration with national databases such as dispatching databases of BWO “Syrdarya” and BWO “Amudarya” and gradual transformation into a corporate information system for accounting, analysis and use of water and land resources in the Aral Sea basin;
  • increased information capacity, data completeness and reliability;
  • extended functional capabilities and increased operational reliability of the system;
  • developed and strengthened partnership between information suppliers and users;
  • wider and free access to information.

The portal will be based on existing though not yet always easily accessible information maintained by the Scientific Information Centre (SIC ICWC) and other organisations in the region subordinated to the Interstate Commission for Water Coordination (ICWC). Links will also be established to and information derived from other on-line resources on water, energy and environment in Central Asia, as well as to relevant policy processes (e.g. SPECA, REAP, ENVSEC etc.).

It is also planned to regularly produce and distribute publications to inform decision-makers, NGOs and the general public while implementing the project.

SIC ICWC will develop the regional information system in accordance with the “Agreement between Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan on the creation and operation of national, basin, and regional databases on joint use and conservation of water resources in the Aral Sea basin”, signed by ICWC members.

UNEP/GRID-Arendal and UNECE will introduce international experience in getting information using modern Internet technologies inter alia responding to the Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration and Chapter 40 of Agenda 21, UNECE Aarhus Convention, and WSSD Plan of Implementation

Capacity of Central Asian countries for providing ICWC with timely information on water re-sources for decision-making and further dissemination will be strengthened by creating a permanent network of regional correspondents of SIC ICWC.

The project activities will involve 13 oblast water organizations from the five countries in the region (6 — in Uzbekistan, 2 — in Kazakhstan, 2 — in Turkmenistan, 1 — in Kyrgyzstan, and 2 — in Tajikistan), to which computer equipment will be delivered for information collection, processing and transmission.

These organizations will form an information network, to which it is planned to connect all oblast water organization in the Aral Sea basin step by step.

During the discussion, the following was agreed by the participants:

  1. UNECE and GRID-Arendal will provide to SIC ICWC relevant international news items for the CAREWIB portal and editorial support on an ad hoc basis within resources available from in the project. A longer-term strategy for sustainability of such services, including building of SIC ICWC’s capacities, will be developed within the project.
  2. SIC ICWC will prepare a draft overview of CAREWIB user audience for comments and discussion, the result will be used as a guiding documents for developing a portal. (Preliminary list of user groups: Decision makers, Water experts, NGOs, Teachers and lecturers, Mass media, NGOs and donors).
  3. GA and UNECE will comment on the TOR for national correspondents, the information classifier proposed by SIC ICWC, and the draft structure of the portal
  4. A technical meeting between GRID-Arendal and SIC ICWC will be organized to discuss in detail web design and formats of hard-copy publications. The meeting will be held in the first half of 2004 in Arendal or Tashkent.
  5. The ‘master’ version of the CAREWIB portal will be the Russian-language edition. Translation into English will be done for selected sections identified through further consultations, analysis of the target audience and user feedback.
  6. The partners will take into account SDC’s priority expectations such as
    • high quality of the language
    • availability and high quality of substantive information
    • high quality of visual presentation
    • regular interactions with the donor community
  7. SDC will help establish connection between CAREWIB and other relevant SDC-funded projects, like capacity-building of national hydrometservices including the Regional Hydrological Centre. A seamless connection for display of RHC’s observation and forecast data (a ‘hydromet window’) can be foreseen within CAREWIB
  8. GA and UNECE will draft letters for potential partner organisation. (If feasible, the letter may include an invitaion for face-to-face consultations e.g. in the frame of the Almaty conference)
  9. Administrative issues:
    • inception report is due to April 2004 (SIC ICWC with inputs from UNECE and GA);
    • annual plan of operation should be submitted for the following year with each annual report;
    • one steering committee meeting should be scheduled at the end of a calendar year (November — January each year);
    • the partners should finalise ASAP and submit to the SDC a work plan for 2004 and the multiyear project budget breakdown (taking into account annex 1 of the agreement raising the project budget to USD 290,000);
    • SDC should be immediately informed in writing about any reallocation of funds between budget lines exceeding 10% of the respective budget lines.
  10. Forthcoming meetings, tentative attendance:
    • presentation of the CAREWIB to the board of IFAS, Dushanbe 27 March (Johan Gely, Victor Dukhovny; JG will approach IFAS in this regard)
    • Aral Sea Basin Programme donor meeting, Tashkent, 1st week of May (Johan Gely, Bo Libert)
    • CAREWIB consultations with info providers in the frame of the Almaty water conference (and possibly users), Almay, 26-28 May (SIC ICWC, Nickolai Denisov)
    • web design/graphical production workshop (SIC ICWC and GA, possibly others), Arendal or Tashkent, exact place and date to be decided

Model of the portal central web-site, prepared in SIC ICWC, was considered in detail. The planned regional water and ecological web portal will contain the following sections:

  1. News block — information on the current events in the region and abroad, related to the portal themes; reviews and comments regarding more interesting web-sites, prints, etc.
  2. Catalogue of water and ecological web-sites, both Central Asian and foreign.
  3. Information system on water and land resources in the Aral Sea basin
  4. Knowledge base (bibliographic database and electronic library)
  5. Database on the present and future policies, strategies, programs and projects of national governments, NGOs and regional organizations, donor organizations and agencies, functioning in the field of water resources and environment.
  6. Calendar of events — information on conferences, exhibitions, congresses, symposiums and so on.
  7. Information dissemination service
  8. Forum for discussing exciting regional problems