THE TRAINING WORKSHOP ON THE PROJECT «WATER QUALITY IN CENTRAL ASIA»
The training workshop on the project «Water Quality in Central Asia» was held in Tashkent on 18-19 October 2011. The workshop was organized with the support of UNECE.
In total 15 representatives of hydrometeorological and environmental organizations from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan participated at this workshop.
The following reporters delivered their reports:
- Beglov I.F. (SIC ICWC, Uzbekistan) – Water and environmental knowledge portal in Central Asia - CAWater-Info
- Nazariy A.M. (SIC ICWC, Uzbekistan) – Analytical tools of CAREWIB
- Gapparov B.Kh. (SIC ICWC, Uzbekistan) – CAREWIB Information System (IS) on water and land resources in the Aral Sea basin
The development of regional information exchange has become one of the most important elements of water resources and ecosystem management improvement at the regional, national, and provincial levels. ICWC paid great attention to the use of many available tools in the region that help establishing exchange of information among different stakeholders and are suitable for different conditions and groups of actors. Thanks to the good will and support from all ICWC members, the portal and IS developed under the CAREWIB project are the unique information products having no analogues throughout the Central Asia.
The regional information system has become fully functional and can provide decision makers, professionals, and the general public with timely, regular, accurate and reliable information. This regional information system contains information on water sector, water resources and related issues, such as hydropower, environment, best international practices, and actions undertaken for achievement of sustainable water management.
In terms of environmental security in the Central Asia countries, the major problems are the shortage and pollution of water resources (surface water and groundwater). Rivers, canals, and reservoirs of the republics and even groundwater are subjected to multifold anthropogenic loads.
Since the sixties of the last century, due to intensive development of new lands and extensive development of industry, livestock farming, urbanization, construction of drainage systems, and diversions of river water for irrigation, water quality in river basins has progressively deteriorated. This fact worsens the ecological-hygienic, sanitary and epidemiological situation, particularly in the river lower reaches. The river water in the flow formation zones contains pollutants from outwash of rocks forming river channels and sewages from economic activities.
At present, the water quality problem is critical and has to be timely addressed. In this context, the project «Water Quality in Central Asia» initiated the development of DB on water quality in order to inform professionals and decision makers, as well as the general public about the situation in area of water quality using the three pilot rivers.
The Scientific-Information Center of ICWC has designed a new section titled “Water quality” in the regional CAREWIB IS. This section was presented to the participants of the training. The capabilities of this section were discussed and necessary adjustments were made. Besides, practical exercises were given in the use of this section and input of data into the DB.
During discussions, the participants formulated the following wishes for improving the database:
- It is desirable to have concurrent representation on the graph of the monitoring data both for Kazakh and Kyrgyz parts of the Chu river and the Talas river;
- It is desirable to make provision for simultaneous output of tabular data on different gauging stations for comparison;
- In the output data it is necessary to develop the single sub-section “Information on samples” with descriptive text about sampling date and other relevant data, while other similar subsections containing description of samples should be removed.
As the main outcome of the workshop we may consider the involvement into information exchange of Kazhydromet, Kyrgyzhydromet, and Tajikhydromet that will provide information on water quality, yet beginning with the three pilot rivers and later on expanding the coverage, for the regional CAREWIB IS. Thus, capacities and capabilities of both CAREWIB IS and the CAWater-Info portal as a whole are expanding.
Having discussed the reports and exchanged opinions, the participants have made the following decisions:
- Make special mention of SIC’s efforts related to development of the information system on water and land resources in the Aral Sea basin - CAREWIB - and the knowledge portal on water and environment in Central Asia - CAWater-Info.
- When filling in the database on water quality under the project «Water Quality in Central Asia», free access to DB should be provided with the following note “Currently the database is filled in”.
- Representatives of SIC ICWC should assist the trainees in filling in the database.
- Express thanks to the UN Economic Commission for Europe for the support rendered in this event and to CAREC for assistance in organization of the training.
- Express thanks to SIC ICWC for organization and holding of the training.
|