1st MEETING OF THE WORKING GROUP ON IMPROVEMENT OF ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE, CONTRACT & LEGAL BASIS AND ON DEVELOPMENT OF ASBP-3
Almaty, 10-11 December 2009
About 50 representatives of national and regional organizations and international agencies supported EC IFAS took part in the meeting.
Agenda included 4 sessions:
1st day:
1. Revealing the weaknesses in the existing regional organizations and related national bodies, and also the regional and national legal basis (Chairman - B. Libert, UNECE Regional Adviser).
Results of questionnaire sent to all key organizations on behalf of EC IFAS were discussed within this session.
2. General directions for improvement of the organizational structure and the contract and legal basis (Chairman - B. Libert, UNECE Regional Adviser).
2 reports dedicated to proposals on improvement of organizational structure for the Aral Sea Basin and the contract-legal basis were presented by international experts Vinogradov S. and Steklov Yu.N. within this session.
2nd day:
3. Conditions for ASBM-3 development (Chairman - M. Krashnay, UNECE Regional Adviser)
Participants discussed "How it is needed to do" but not "what to do".
4. Proposals on main directions of the ASBM-3 development (Chairman - M. Krashnay, UNECE Regional Adviser)
Selection criteria for ASBM-3 themes and content were discussed within this session.
B.Libert presented the key paper.
EC IFAS will continue to coordinate the working team on the ASBM-3 development, of which the final version has to be presented to the EC IFAS in June 2010. It is agreed that the 2nd meeting of the working group of experts will be held in March 2010.
PARTICIPATION OF ICWC DELEGATION AT THE 5th ICID CONFERENCE AND 60th MEETING OF THE EXECUTIVE COUNCIL OF ICID
60th IEC Meeting & 5th Asian Regional Conference of ICID were held on 6-12 December 2009, in New Delhi, India.
The International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage (ICID) was established in 1950 under the initiative of Indian distinguished scientist and water management specialists. Prof. Gulati. The ICID headquarters is in New Delhi, India.
Today India is on the 2nd place in the world due to the irrigated lands area (87 million ha) after China and is the example of greatest governmental attention to the water and agriculture development It is confirmed by existence of the Ministry of Water Management at the Federal and the state levels, by the huge investments to the water sector (more than 8 billion dollars USA per year), by the irrigation and water resources development and by governmental support of water sector. The fact that the Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh inaugurated the Conference with his introduction speech at the presence of the ministers of water management of the country and states and 4 ministers (water management, finance, economy and information) took part and gave the closing addresses to participants, speaks for itself. The Prime-Minister had emphasized in his speech that population growth creates additional water demand, decrease of water availability per capita, climate impact increase. Indian government declared "National water mission", which is aimed to implementation of IWRM, water saving, disposal minimizing and ensuring more equitability of water distribution. The "National water mission" includes database accessible for broad use especially for assessment and monitoring of climate change and its impact on water resources; involving stakeholders into water saving and protection; increasing effectiveness of water resources use by 20%. The "National water mission" will develop new regulation mechanisms including legal positions and financial relationships, as well will promote realization of new technologies: groundwater artificial recharge, sprinkling and drop irrigation, increasing productivity of agricultural production aimed to ensure the food security of the country. The priority of the country is the increasing of annual growth rate of agricultural production twice (by 4% in the next year). Effectiveness of gravity irrigation has to be increased from 40 up to 60% and of wells - from 35 up to 65%. During eleventh planning period - 2007-2012 - the country will add 16 million ha of new irrigated lands.
The country is implementing the program of consultative service through involving of the institutes and universities as well the program of women participation in irrigated agriculture.
The program on irrigated lands and water management development was widely presented at the Conference and its thematic sessions. The Ministry of Water Management of India is planning to build 64 dams additionally to 4700 existing large dams, meaning that 108 km3 of water will be added to existing 255 billion m3 of water By the way India will cover its water demands up to 2050 by existing water resources (including 433 km3 of the exploiting groundwater in consideration with future artificial groundwater recharge). But there will be water resources deficit in some Indian states (Radjastan, Gudjarat, Andra, Pradesh, Karpataka and Tamil Nadu). Therefore the interbasin diversions of runoff aimed to compensate water deficits and to avoid the annual and seasonal runoff/precipitation variation are planned by the state. Particularly the hydrographs and characteristics of runoff and precipitation of the Himalayan watersheds and of the peninsula were identified. There were found more than 30 dependencies between hydrographs and characteristics of runoff and precipitation. These findings can be used for planning additional water resources (up to 200 km3) during the dry seasons Rivers with the great "donor capacity" are Brahmaputra, Mahandi, Godavari and western rivers flowing from the western coastal zone. Additionally India gives more attention to develop the WUAs, which amounted already 56,000, as well to control soil salinization and waterlogging which reach 3 and 6.45 million ha accordingly. They probably can be increased up to 13 million ha.
The ICWC delegation took part in the jubilee celebrations: Beisebekov P.O., WUA's President of Kazakhstan, Beishekeev K.K., Director of enterprises construction of the Water Management Department of Kyrgyzstan, Khasanov Kh., Deputy minister of rehabilitation measures and water resources of Tajikistan, Ernazarov N.Sh., assistant manager of headquarters of water management of Ministry of agriculture and water resources management of Uzbekistan, Mukhamedjanov L., secretary of NCID of Uzbekistan, and Prof. Dukhovny V.A., SIC ICWC Director, honorable vice-president of ICID. Unfortunately, the representatives of Turkmenistan could not participate in the conference.
The ICWC delegation could participate owing to the large preparatory work conducted by Prof. Chandra Madramoote, ICID's President, Mr. Gopalakrishna, the ICID's Secretary General, Prof. Dukhovny V.A., the honorable vice-president of ICID, and also owing to the financial support of the World Bank, particularly Mr. Fields D. and Mrs. Nizamova I. The participants express great thanks to all of them.
The ICWC delegation took part in the working group meeting on climate change, in the meeting with the President and the Secretary General of ICID, in the special working team "ST-ARAL", which discussed the work results together with the foreign representatives. The high importance of the ICWC activity on the CAREWIB information system development, the training activity, as well successes in IWRM development and the irrigation systems automation was noted within the meeting.
Participants of the working team meeting had worked out proposals on transforming the "ST-ARAL" into the working group "Irrigation and drainage in the countries in the social-ecological transforming conditions" due to expiration of the term of responsibility. The proposals were presented by Prof. Dukhovny V.A. at the meeting of Standing Committee on Strategic Planning and were approved and included after into the EC ICID report and adopted. Prof. Kovalenko P.I., Vice-President of ICID, was elected as the chairman of the working group, and Prof. Dukhovny V.A., Honorable Vice-President of ICID was assigned as the deputy chairman of the working group.
During the work it was stated that Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are the active members of ICID, and Kyrgyzstan did not pay one's subscription for 2 years and Tajikistan - after 2002 too. Turkmenistan became a member of ICID but paid no entrance fee nor periodic fees. The EC ICID and headquarters appealed to the heads of national committees of those countries (Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan) to renew their activity in the ICID. The attention was draw also It was noted also that only Uzbekistan participates in other working groups (Drainage, Climate, Finance) but the representatives of other countries are absent in the working groups.
At the ICID Executive Committee's meeting, Prof. Dukhovny V.A. pointed out that such situation is caused by difficulties of our countries' participation in the working groups meetings because of financial problems He has suggested that the working group leaders to be turned to organizing their work as the e-information exchange and e-conferences and also to seek the financial resources for participation of the working group members in the seminars because it is very important for countries especially with transition economy. This proposal was adopted by the EC ICID.
(Continued in the next issue)
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