Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) -- On 6 April, President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev got acquainted with the presentation on environmental protection activities.

As part of the ongoing administrative reform in the country, the Ministry of Natural Resources was organized. Currently, there are many pressing issues to be solved in the sphere.

There are opportunities for the development of ecotourism in nature reserves and nurseries, as well as hunting tourism in the respective farms, while taking all the necessary measures to protect nature. In this regard, the task was set to attract tourists to natural objects, to organize nurseries for breeding predatory animals.

The President paid special attention to the protection of air, water, land resources and underground resources.

In particular, at more than 500 enterprises, water treatment facilities do not meet the standards, and at some enterprises, there are no such facilities at all. The small amount of compensation for causing harm to the environment has led to a situation where it is more profitable for enterprises to pay compensation than to install a cleaning technology. In this regard, it was proposed to increase the amount of compensation for wastewater discharges over the norm. The Head of state instructed to organize the activities of the environmental supervision inspectorate.

In addition, 7 million tons of household waste is generated annually in the country. Of these, a little over 2 million tons are processed. Landfill gas and wastewater that form landfills harm nature.

A project to generate 15 megawatts of electricity from waste has been launched at the old landfill in Akhangaran. The Head of state noted the need for expanding this experience by setting up waste processing and alternative energy production at other landfills.

It was noted that the forested area in forestry is only 8 percent. The possibility of creating 221 thousand hectares of forests in the steppe and 15 thousand hectares of forests in the highlands through the development of tree nurseries was noted.

Instructions were given to introduce a completely new system for the development of forestry and the implementation of the nationwide project “Yashil Makon” (Green Space). In particular, it is strictly determined that the creation of parks and forests will be carried out based on the targeted program financed from centralized sources.

In hydrometeorology, measures have been defined to increase the number of automated meteorological stations, automate hydrological changes, and launch a mobile application for the agrometeorological service.

Small automated air pollution monitoring stations will be installed in each district and city. Based on their data, a rating of air purity will be formed and the work of officials will be evaluated.