Uzbekistan Environment - The Times Of Central Asia

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Uzbekistan Launches Construction of New Power Plants

On March 25th, Uzbekistan President Shavkat Mirziyoyev pressed a symbolic button to launch the construction of new power plants in the country’s Namangan region. Today, the Namangan region has 913 megawatts of generating capacity. Over the past three years, electricity consumption in the region has increased by 24 percent and to meet the ever-growing demand, three projects have been launched with a total capacity of 1,228 megawatts at a cost of $1.1 billion. The projects comprise a cascade of hydroelectric power plants and two solar power plants. The Uzbekhydroenergo joint stock company will invest $434 million in a cascade of 6 hydroelectric power stations. With a total capacity of 228 megawatts, the plants will generate 1 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity per year, saving 310 million cubic meters of gas and providing electricity to 430 thousand households. The German company Hyper Partners GmbH will build a solar power plant with a capacity of 500 megawatts. The cost of the project is $350 million and the annual capacity, 1.095 billion kilowatt-hours. Another solar power plant will be built in cooperation with Tepelen Group Holding Limited from the United Arab Emirates. Its cost will also be $350 million and its capacity, 500 megawatts. The connection of the above power plants to the power grid is scheduled for completion by the end of this year. Combined, the projects will provide the Namangan region with an annual generating capacity of 2141 megawatts and 7.8 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity. Since this is more than enough to cover the region's need for 5.5 billion kilowatt-hours, any excess electricity will be sent to neighbouring Andijan and Fergana.

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Automatic Air Pollution Monitoring Stations Installed Across Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan’s meteorological agency Uzhydromet in collaboration with the Zamin International Public Foundation, is to implement additional automation of monitoring of atmospheric air pollution. During the first stage of the project in 2021, two German-made automatic air pollution monitoring stations were installed in Tashkent. In 2023, as part of the second stage, automatic stations went into operation in the cities of Gulistan, Jizzakh, Samarkand, Urgench, Nukus, and Termez. This year, further stations have been installed in Andijan, Namangan, Fergana, Navoi, Bukhara, Karshi, Nurafshan, and Tashkent. On March 24th, The Uzbek Ministry of Ecology, Environmental Protection and Climate Change reported on a press tour organized by Uzhydromet and the Zamin Foundation of the new automatic air pollution monitoring station in Tashkent. The station registers such pollutants as fine dispersed particles PM10 and PM2.5, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide, ammonia, and ozone. At the event, Khurshid Tashpolatov, head of department at Uzhydromet, stated, “The station works online and transmits data on air quality within a radius of 5 km to the server every 10 minutes, every hour. Information on atmospheric air pollution is received by Uzhydromet, compiled into a single database, and published on the public platform monitoring.meteo.uz.” Air monitoring data is published by Uzhydromet on social networks at 9:00 am and 18:00 pm daily.

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Dushanbe, Tashkent Are Worst Central Asian Cities for Air Quality

According to the latest ranking of the world capitals with the dirtiest air, published by the Swiss technology company IQAir, Dushanbe in Tajikistan came in fourth-worst, and Uzbekistan's capital Tashkent took 22nd place. According to IQAir's data, the average annual concentration of PM2.5 particles in amounted to 28.6 µg/m3, which is 5-7 times higher than World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations. The ranking was 'led' by India's capital New Delhi, followed by Dhaka (Bangladesh), Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso), Dushanbe (Tajikistan) and Baghdad (Iraq). In 2023 only 10 countries had air quality that met WHO recommendations. The cleanest air was in the capitals of Puerto Rico, New Zealand, Australia, Iceland, Bermuda, Estonia and Finland. Recently, Tashkent launched Air Tashkent, an open-source data platform for air quality monitoring. It was developed by the Department of Digital Development under the capital's hokimiyat (local administration), together with a group of national scientists called Amudario. The platform displays data from 10 stations which are updated hourly. Statistics for the last seven days are also available. To combat harmful vehicle emissions in the Uzbek capital, officials have opened a diagnostic center. The center will check the amount of harmful emissions in the car's exhaust, and according to those results, will put a sticker containing an RFID chip on the windshield in either red, yellow or green colors. That fits into a plan to divide Tashkent into ecological zones -- and will restrict entry of vehicles that don't comply with that zone 's specific sticker. Fines collected from those drivers will be used to fund ecological remediation. The government of Uzbekistan has recently taken active measures to combat air pollution. Among the most significant are the capital's gradual transition to electric transport, like city buses, the installation of exhaust filters at industrial enterprises, the gradual phase-out of AI-80 gasoline by 2026, and the construction of green power plants. According to the CEO of IQAir's North American division, Gloria Delphine Hammes, PM2.5 particles "kill more people than any other pollutant that exists." The main means of production of PM2.5 particles is the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas. Those particles, in turn, are responsible for the premature deaths of more than four million people worldwide each year. A separate analysis by a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany found that fossil fuels are responsible for 65% of those deaths. In addition, the danger of these particles is that once they appear in one place, they can be carried by the wind for hundreds of thousands of kilometers in numerous directions, harming large numbers of people in other geographical regions.

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FAO to Improve Soil Health In Uzbekistan

Earlier this month, The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and its Global Soil Partnership (GSP), in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture of Uzbekistan, held a seminar in Tashkent on the ‘Recarbonization of Agricultural Soils’ (RECSOIL). The meeting concluded with unanimous approval of the development of an action plan for the development of the initiative in Uzbekistan. RECSOIL will be implemented in collaboration with two other FAO projects in Uzbekistan funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF): ‘Integrated Natural Resources Management in Drought-Prone and Salt-Affected Agricultural Production Landscapes in Central Asia and Turkey’ and ‘Sustainable Forest and Rangelands Management in the Dryland Ecosystems of Uzbekistan.’ In recent years, both projects have proven effective in supporting agricultural development in drought-prone regions of Uzbekistan through the use of advanced resource-saving methods, and continue to increase farmers’ incomes through the contribution of technical equipment to farms, and by maintaining land degradation neutrality. The initiative addresses challenges related to climate change by promoting sustainable soil management (SSM) and by enhancing its health, make soil more productive and shock resilient. Aimed at maintaining and increasing carbon stocks to boost soil health which in turn, will secure and increase production and income, SSM practices include using cover crops, crop rotation and agroforestry. The new scheme to tackle both carbon sequestration and mitigation of greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions, will be piloted through the provision of training for farmers and financial compensation to support their adoption of SSM practices. RECSOIL also provides robust methods to monitor and assess both soil health and levels of GHG emissions reduced through the project.

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Uzbek Environmentalists Propose Harnessing Rainwater to Combat Water Crisis

The Ecological Party of Uzbekistan has proposed using collected rainwater as a groundwater supply for the population. The activists plan to develop a corresponding program and submit it to the government for consideration. Rainwater, after appropriate treatment, can be reused for certain purposes. The average person uses about 150 liters of water per day for drinking, bathing, and cleaning, and the party claims that each person can save up to 71 liters of clean drinking water per day by this method. In the context of water scarcity in Central Asia, this sounds more than relevant. After all, over the past 50 years, glaciers in Central Asia have shrunk by about 30%, putting Uzbekistan in 25th place among the 164 countries suffering from "water stress." The population of the five countries in the Central Asian region totals more than 78 million, and by 2050 that number will have grown to 90-100 million people. Water shortages may rise to affect 25-30% of the population. At a meeting of the Uzbek government at the end of 2023, officials said that the country's economy loses $5 billion annually due to inefficient use of water resources. Climate change, shrinking water sources and growing water consumption could lead to a water deficit of 15 billion cubic meters by 2030.

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Kazakhstan And Uzbekistan To Install Transboundary Water Meters

Since the use of transboundary water resources for irrigation remains a pressing issue in Central Asia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have agreed to install meters to calculate the exact volume of water consumed by both countries. Kazakhstan will install meters on the territory of Uzbekistan, and the Uzbek side will install meters in Kazakhstan. Experts from both countries are currently determining the best locations of the meters. Negotiations are also underway for the involvement of international organizations in the project. Emphasizing the importance of the agreement for Kazakhstan, which is located downstream of the region’s rivers, the Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation of Kazakhstan, Nurzhan Nurzhigitov stated, “The installation of meters will make it possible to monitor the volumes of water consumed by both countries online. In April, we plan to begin negotiations on the implementation of similar projects with Kazakhstan’s other neighbours.”