Multilateral consultations to be held on dev't of UN Special Program for Aral Sea Basin

ASHGABAT. KAZINFORM Multilateral consultations will be held at Turkmenistan's Foreign Affairs Ministry on the development of the UN Special Program for the Aral Sea Basin (UN SPAS) on Dec. 18, Trend reports referring to the State News Agency of Turkmenistan.

A meeting of the task force group (TFG) is to be held on Dec. 18 at the country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, at which the Regulation on the TFG and the Group’s Work Plan will be approved, the ministry earlier reported.

In July 2019, a 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. At that meeting 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, Trend reports.

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.