The Turkmen delegation held a meeting at the UN headquarters in New York on cooperation between international institutions and the Central Asian region on the UN-International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea (IFAS) model, Trend reports with reference to the Turkmen Foreign Ministry.
At the event, special attention was paid to the need to strengthen cooperation in resolving the Aral Sea problem. In this regard, the role of Turkmenistan as the country chairing the IFAS and the importance of the upcoming multilateral consultations on determining the format of a future UN special program for the Aral Sea basin were emphasized, the report said.
It was noted that the above-mentioned consultations, approved by the relevant resolution of the UN General Assembly, are intended to become a practical step towards the creation of an integrated international mechanism for resolving the environmental disaster in the Aral Sea region.
Established in the 1990s with the founding of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, the IFAS is aimed at financing joint projects and programs to save the Aral Sea and improve the environmental situation in the Aral Sea region. In December 2008, IFAS was granted an observer status in the UN General Assembly.
Turkmenistan is affected by the problem of Aral Sea’s ecology. It is most noticeable in the country’s northern Dashoguz Region, where problems have arisen with the provision of drinking water, the fight against salinization of cultivation lands, land degradation and desertification.
