SIC ICWC PARTICIPATES IN A WORKSHOP TO PLAN THE NATIONAL WATER RESOURCES MANAGEMENT PROJECT IN UZBEKISTAN, PHASE III
The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation has been implementing water development projects in Uzbekistan and the region as whole since 1998. The Agency completed 5 regional and 3 national water resources management projects. In particular, the National water resources management project in Uzbekistan implemented in 2016-2019 yielded the expected results. Practical results have been achieved on transparent and user needs-driven water management.
Therefore, the Ministry of Water Management of Uzbekistan and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation have signed an agreement for implementation of Phase II of the National water resources management project in Uzbekistan in 2020-2023. The overall project goal is to improve the rural population’s livelihoods through integrated water resource management in Uzbekistan. This is to be achieved also through adoption of information and communication technologies in day-to-day operations of the Ministry, basin irrigation system authorities, rayon irrigation system authorities, and water user and farmer associations, creation of favorable conditions for gaining required knowledge, collection and sharing of information on a real-time basis.
On 15 June, a workshop was organized at the Ministry of Water Management to plan Phase III of the Project. The event brought together representatives of international organizations dealing with water, concerned national ministries and agencies.
Opening the workshop, Minister of Water Management of Uzbekistan, Mr. Khamraev noted that the results achieved by the project were very important and relevant for Uzbekistan in time, when water stress increases due to climate change.
The project implementation team headed by O. Islamova presented the Project’s Phase II and summarized the results achieved.
In her speech Director of SIC ICWC, Dinara Ziganshina highlighted real coordination between Uzbek ministries and agencies in the process of drafting a new Water Code and presented SIC’s approaches to cross-sectoral integration in the Central Asian countries. In particular, she underlined the importance of practical tools for coherent implementation and monitoring of strategic tasks on water, food, energy and environmental security. She presented the results of background analysis regarding the benefits of cross-sectoral solutions on water, food and energy security in Central Asia conducted by SIC ICWC with the support of OECD in 2020. The analysis used statistics for more than 110 indicators from the five countries. Ms. Ziganshina also demonstrated SIC’s methodology for assessment of water security in administrative territories (case-studies of Khorezm, Navoiy and Samarkand provinces). Future plans on a forthcoming project “Regional mechanisms for the low-carbon, climate-resilient transformation of the energy-water-land Nexus in Central Asia” to be implemented by OECD, UNECE, SIC ICWC, and EBRD were shared as well.
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