OREANDA-NEWS. December 8, 2008. The regular, 52nd meeting of the Interstate Commission for Water Coordination (ICWC) was held in Ashgabat.

The representative meeting which concluded a series of the international environmental and water forums in the Turkmen capital brought together the heads and leading specialists of the sectoral departments from Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

Thanking Turkmen partners for hospitality and high level of organisation of the forum the participants focused on the importance of the ICWC’s work aimed at elaborating the more affective approaches to the existing problems and the joint strategy of further effective co-operation.

The reports on the results of the 2008 vegetation period and implementation of the limits on water withdrawals, and the schedule of the water reservoir cascades in the basins of the largest rivers in the region – Amu Darya and Syr Darya were presented at the meeting. The participants called for establishing the system of real-time informing the partners of the situations in the controlled sections.

Establishing the regional network for training specialists of top and middle levels for the water, energy and nature conservation organisations in the Central Asian countries at the ICWC training centre and its branches was a focus of the forum.

Putting emphasis on the role of workshops and seminar as an opportunity to establish personal contacts and discuss the common platform for action to solve the existing problems the participants unanimously called for establishing co-operation with the EU member states in this field. In particular, the partners agreed to address the proposal to provide assistance in establishing the Central Asia training network on integrated water resources management to the European partners. The participants were unanimous that the agendas, budgets and venue for of these workshops should be considered and approved by the ICWC.

The Central Asian experts discussed the draft agreement on the use of water and energy resources of the Syr Rarya River basin and agreed to finalize it during the meeting of the heads of the Central Asia water and energy departments and the experts of the regional and national working groups which would be held in Bishkek.

The organizational issues were also considered during the meeting.

The next, 53rd meeting of the ICWC would be held in Tajikistan in April 2009. The participants drafted and approved the agenda of the next meeting. In particular, it would be focus on the implementation of the decisions of the Interstate Commission for Water Coordination by the executive bodies.

The issues discussed and the decisions taken were reflected in the Minutes which were signed by the designated representatives of five Central Asian states.