ASTANA. On February 22-23 the EU and countries of the region celebrated the jubilee of diplomatic relations at the international conference "25 Years of the European Union – Central Asia Relations: From the Past to the Future."
The key focus of the conference was on the renewal of the EU strategy for Central Asia. This document defines further aspects of EU cooperation with Central Asia, which will be ready by mid-2019. The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Kazakhstan, Mr Kairat Abdrakhmanov, noted that the strengthening security and stability should remain a priority in this cooperation.
For a quarter of a century, the countries of our region cooperated in various directions with the European Union. One of the strategic directions is security matters, including environmental challenges, which have always been a priority for both sides.
The separate session at the conference was devoted to common security challenges for the EU and Central Asian countries. Within the framework of this session, CAREC Executive Director Dr Iskandar Abdullaev named environmental challenges in Central Asia, which require immediate action in developing a new strategy for interaction between the parties.
According to Dr Abdullaev, the main challenges in the region are related to the constant population growth, low economic growth; outdated infrastructure and politics; as well as to increasing problems of climate change. Listing the EU initiatives on the environmental challenges of the region, he called for a further widening of regional processes and strengthening focus on sharing experiences and best practices in the field of environment, exchanging new methods for better environmental protection and water resources management.
In his speech, CAREC Executive Director also explained that inaction regarding existing problems would inevitably lead to significant economic losses. For example, limited water cooperation according to the study of adelphi and CAREC will cost the region 4.5 billion US dollars per year. The loss of biodiversity is about 6.5 billion US dollars. In addition, the price of land degradation, due to changes in land use only, is about 5.85 billion US dollars for the period from 2001 to 2009 (ELD Initiative, 2016).
Based on its regional mandate, CAREC seeks to strengthen regional cooperation and offers the following tools to address the above problems:
• Facilitating dialogue and access to policy making
• Basin planning and cross-border cooperation
• Assessment of ecosystem services and consideration of natural resources
• Environmental impact assessment - impact measurement
• Knowledge sources: on-line database, project results, impact comparison
• Analytical support: peer-reviewed publications, reports and summaries
All in all, the conference was full of discussions that will certainly play a role in shaping up a future interaction between the European Union and Central Asia.