Tashkent hosted the 1st meeting of the Coordinating Council for the project «Conservation and sustainable management of lakes, wetlands, and riparian corridors as pillars of a resilient and land degradation-neutral Aral basin landscape supporting sustainable livelihoods».

The project is being implemented by the Ministry of Ecology, Environmental Protection, and Climate Change, the United Nations Development Programme, and the Global Environment Facility (GEF). The event was attended by representatives of ministries and departments, international organizations, experts, and specialists in the field.

"The project is aimed at ensuring the sustainable development of new protected areas in the Aral Sea region in Karakalpakstan and the Bukhara region. At the event, we were presented with information about the work done in 2023 and plans for 2024. Within the framework of the project, 4 components are being implemented, among which the main ones are water resources and the fight against land degradation," said Vadim Sokolov, head of the Project Implementation Agency of the International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea.

The target area of the project is the lower reaches of the Amu Darya and the Aral Sea basin in the southern and southwestern parts of Uzbekistan. This territory administratively includes the Alat and Karakul districts of the Bukhara region, as well as the Amudarya and Muynak districts of the Republic of Karakalpakstan.

The work carried out within the framework of the project was discussed at the event. Errors and shortcomings were also identified, and attention was paid to measures to eliminate them.

"Our goal is to identify what needs to be done in 2024. During the discussions, we paid attention to each proposal and identified plans for the future," said Akmal Ismatov, head of the Aral Sea Region Wetlands Management Project.

Within the framework of the project, water bodies in the target territories were investigated and analyzed, data was collected on the assessment of pasture capacity and recommendations were derived, the state of existing and newly formed protected natural territories was assessed, several regulatory documents and draft laws were prepared, a "Geoinformation database of protected natural territories" was developed, observation towers were purchased for protected natural territories, SUVs, quads, camera traps, etc.