OREANDA-NEWS. August 30, 2013. International experience demonstrates the importance of cross border cooperation (CBC) on water at various levels: international, national, interindustry, as well as at the users’ level to achieve sustainable development goals.

This was started by Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources of Ukraine Oleg Proskuryakov during a briefing, which was held at the Government House.

The Government of Ukraine signed 7 intergovernmental agreements on cross border cooperation on water with all neighboring countries (Poland, Russia, Belarus, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Moldova) and 6 interdepartmental agreements on cooperation in water management (Egypt, China, Jordan, Tunisia, Morocco and Syria).

"The main objective of cooperation is to develop mutually beneficial cooperation to address priorities such as sustainable use of transboundary water resources, prevention of pollution of water bodies, development of network of monitoring, information exchange, monitoring the passage of flood, improvement of emergency notification about emergencies associated with a water factor and exchange experiences on implementation of new technologies in addressing water management issues," the head of the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources said.

An example of fruitful cooperation on flood protection of cross border areas that are vulnerable of harmful effects can be as a bilateral cooperation on the Ukrainian-Hungarian border in the basin of the Tisza River, which is constantly evolving. "As part of the implementation of various projects number of automatic stations increased to 48 units that allow us to receive information for management decisions. The CIS countries have no analogues of such a system," Oleg Proskuryakov said.

Furthermore, the Minister said that on 20-21 August Ukrainian delegation was in Dushanbe at the International Conference of high level on water cooperation. "Participation in the International high-level conference provided an opportunity to learn international experience in water resource management and other," the Minister Oleg Proskuryakov said.