ASTANA, Kazakhstan, December 12. Kazakhstan
calls on the international community to support efforts to preserve
the Caspian Sea, the country's President, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev,
said at the International Peace and Trust Forum in Ashgabat,
Trend reports.
According to the head of state, at the current rate of
shallowing, this dangerous process could become irreversible, which
would inevitably cause a chain reaction of environmental,
socio-economic, and even political consequences.
"Kazakhstan has taken the initiative to develop a special
intergovernmental program aimed at preventing the destruction of
the ecosystem and the shallowing of the Caspian Sea. We call on the
entire international community to support our efforts to preserve
this unique body of water. In general, in my opinion, water
diplomacy requires close intergovernmental coordination. Existing
international institutions tend to act in isolation, within narrow
mandates, which is not commensurate with the scale of growing water
problems," Tokayev noted.
The president also emphasized that there is no specialized
structure within the UN system focused exclusively on water
issues.
“Therefore, Kazakhstan proposes to establish an international
water organization that could consolidate all existing mandates of
various UN organizations. The optimal option would be to transform
the inter-agency mechanism UNWATER into a full-fledged specialized
agency or UN organization,” Tokayev said.
