Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) - An article was published in the Wostok magazine on measures taken in Uzbekistan to prevent the negative impact of the Aral Sea crisis on the environment and the livelihoods of the Aral Sea population, Dunyo reported.

The fate of the Aral Sea is a tragedy that goes beyond national and regional borders. Undoubtedly, this is one of the largest global environmental disasters of our time. The Aralkum desert, into which the Aral Sea has turned, continues to expand, and the people living here suffer from the disastrous consequences of this disaster.

As noted in the article, for many years Uzbekistan independently made numerous attempts to mitigate the consequences of the disaster, implementing a number of large-scale projects in the Aral Sea zone.

However, starting from 2016, under the leadership of President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, the country opened up to the world and proclaimed a new regional policy, which allowed the Aral Sea catastrophe to be among the priority tasks of all Central Asian states.

This initiative was supported by the international community. With the support of the United Nations, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the Global Environment Facility, other international organizations and donor states, about 700 thousand hectares were planted on protective Aral bottom - saxaul and other salt tolerant plant species. Within the framework of the Comprehensive Program of Measures to Mitigate the Consequences of the Aral Disaster and the Development of the Aral Sea Region, over 500 projects have been implemented. Uzbekistan has adopted the State Program for the development of the Aral Sea region for 2018-2021.

In 2018, at a meeting of the Council of Heads of the Founding States of the International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea, held in the city of Turkmenbashi, the President of Uzbekistan took the initiative to declare the Aral Sea region a zone of environmental innovation and technology and hold a special conference on this issue with the participation of representatives of the international community.

Held in October 2019 in Nukus, the High-Level International Conference under the auspices of the United Nations “Aral Sea Area - Zone of Environmental Innovations and Technologies” brought together about 250 participants from 28 countries. Its participants were representatives of leading international organizations - the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, the UN Development Program, the UN Regional Center for Preventive Diplomacy for Central Asia, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the European Investment Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, as well as foreign governments and private companies.

Conference participants had the opportunity to see with their own eyes the scale of the tragic consequences of this environmental disaster. Highly appreciating the efforts undertaken by the Republic of Uzbekistan to advance radically new measures to comprehensively solve the problems of the Aral Sea region using innovative solutions and approaches, they supported the efforts of the Uzbek side in this direction and discussed the possibility of joint actions to overcome the consequences of the drying of the Aral Sea.

“No one expects the sea to return, but the people living in the Aral Sea region have hoped for a decent life,” the author concludes.

The quarterly German-language magazine "Wostok" is focused on providing the German audience with a variety of information about the socio-political and socio-economic development of the countries of Eastern Europe and the CIS.