Tag Archives: environment

Chinese hunt for shrimps in the Aral Sea

MO’YNOQ/Uzbekistan, FEB. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Sagynbai Murzayev is a strong and gentle Soviet-made man in his 70s. He used to be a fisherman in windswept Mo’ynoq, a town in Karakalpakstan which lies on the remote western fringe of Uzbekistan. Now he works several jobs and witnesses the Chinese influx.

Mo’ynoq once lay on the shores of the Aral Sea. This sea, though, shrunk rapidly because a Soviet irrigation system siphoned off its tributaries’ waters to feed giant cotton fields.

Left behind is a lunar desert of white dunes that locals call Aralkum (Aral’s Sands).

Murzayev works at the local museum of natural history and has witnessed the retreat from the beginning. His father was also a fisherman, his mother worked in a fishery. He now gathers most of his earnings by driving foreign guests to the sea shores. Most of the visitors are Chinese.

Since 2006 an energy consortium led by China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) has been exploring oil and gas deposits below the former seabed.

Although national Uzbek publications boast about Karakalpakstan’s growth as an energy-rich region, operations in the Ustyurt Plateau seem, to Murzayev at least, to proceed at a slow pace. The few Chinese workers camping on the shoreline are mainly after a rather different and rather unusual resource for Central Asia — shrimps.

Unexcited, Murzayev looked at a Chinese trawler coming ashore.

“The indiscriminate pillage of natural resources has already been proved to be detrimental for us,” he said. “We need to bring the sea back to life and not to scavenge its dead body.”

In the distance, the town’s crumbling homes are a symbol of the small economic advantages that this uncertain oil and gas bonanza can bring to the region. And all the while the fading memories of the local fisherman who used to work on the lake grow thinner and thinner.
>>By Gianluca Pardelli
ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 217, published on Feb. 4 2015)

Kazakhstan signs Antarctic Treaty

NOV. 21 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan, which has virtually zero history of polar exploration, signed up to the Antarctic Treaty, an international agreement to defend the neutrality of the region.

Kazakhstan had shown some interest in the Antarctic region in the past, with private expeditions. In 2011 a Kazakh expedition drove to the South Pole where it planted the national flag on the 20th anniversary of independence from the Soviet Union.

Since then the government has unveiled plans to establish a Kazakh Antarctic station for research and possibly business purposes.

It’s likely that Kazakhstan wants to increase its international profile by signing up to the Antarctic Treaty.

Luca Anceschi, professor of Central Asian Security at the University of Glasgow, said: “This decision is in line with the government’s policy to increase and improve Kazakhstan’s visibility in the international arena.”

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 210, published on Nov. 26 2014)

Uzbekistan’s Aral Sea shrink hits millions

OCT. 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Speaking via a video link to a conference in Tashkent, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said human interference had drained the Aral Sea with implications for millions of people. The Aral Sea, shared by Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, has shrunk dramatically over the past 30 years, mainly due to Soviet era irrigation projects.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 206, published on Oct. 29 2014)

Anti-mining protests in Kyrgyzstan

AUG. 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – In two separate demonstrations, hundreds of protesters in Kyrgyzstan blocked roads to try and stop production at an iron ore mine and an oil refinery, media reported. In both cases, the protesters claimed the sites were damaging the environment, a well-used tactic by protesters wanting to stop industrial production.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 198, published on Sept. 3 2014)

Azerbaijan reducing flaring

JUNE 18 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan has reduced flaring off excess gas at oil producing plants by 50% over the last two years, Anita Georgia a World Bank official said in an interview with Bloomberg.The World Bank is pushing for countries to reduce flaring.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 190, published on June 25 2014)

Kazakhstan sets low tariffs for clean energy

JUNE 13 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s government set a series of low price rates for energy generated from renewable resources, media reported, part of drive to increase the proportion of green power it uses. Kazakhstan has said it wants renewable energy usage to make up 40% of its power consumption by 2050.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 189, published on June 18 2014)

Kazakh court upheld fine on Kashagan

JUNE 9 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – An appeals court in Atyrau upheld an earlier $730m fine against the consortium developing the Kashagan oil field in the Kazakh sector of the Caspian for environmental damage. The fine was originally imposed for excessive gas flaring after an accident in September 2013.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 188, published on JUNE 11 2014)

European bourse signs up to Kazakh carbon scheme

MAY 27 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan has taken another big step towards opening Asia’s first carbon market. The European Energy Exchange (EEX), based in Leipzig in Germany, said it had signed a deal with company called Caspi JSC to help develop the carbon emissions trading scheme, media reported.

A carbon emissions market has existed in Europe for several years and Kazakhstan wants to tap into this knowledge. It’s an ambitious project but one that would benefit both Kazakhstan’s environment and its profile in Asia.

Media quoted Yelnar Nadyrgaliyev, chairman of the board of Caspi JSC.

“EEX has high expertise in operating a regulated market for emissions trading,” he said. “We are pleased to be able to benefit from that as this will be a crucial success factor in establishing an emissions market in Kazakhstan.”

Kazakhstan signed up to the Kyoto Protocols in 2009. This is the international standard, named after the Japanese city in which the treaty was signed, by which countries measure their carbon emissions output. They pledged to reduce them to below 1990 levels.

Kazakhstan is still pumping out roughly 20% less carbon emissions today than it was in 1990, when big business was booming during the Soviet Union, but since the mid-2000s its output has shot up by 40%.

Perhaps understanding that action was needed, and probably with an eye on the green agenda of his centrepiece EXPO-2017, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev introduced a cap on emissions by the country’s top 178 companies.

These companies need to, theoretically, buy credit to increase emissions. Not surprisingly, they’re not happy.

Regardless, signing up EEX, Europe’s largest power market, is an important step to creating a genuine carbon emissions trading market in Kazakhstan.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 186, published on May 28 2014)

Uzbek police arrests Russian businessman

May 19 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbek police arrested Russian businessman Alexander Pozdeev in Tashkent, media reported. Mr Pozdeev is, reportedly, head of the Zapadno-Uralsky Machine- Building Factory in Russia. Media reports were unclear exactly why police had arrested Mr Pozdeev although they said it may be linked to an environmental accident.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 185, published on May 21 2014)

Armenian farmers ask for loans to be cancelled

May 20 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – A row is brewing in Armenia over whether banks should write off loans to farmers as a form of compensation for damage to their crops caused by a cold snap in March.

Despite pressure from farming unions, Armenia’s Central Bank chief, Artur Javadyan, said that banks could not simply write-off the loans.

Mr Javadyan said that banks could not risk financing farmers who already receive beneficial loan rates. The government partly pays the interest on loans to farmers.

“We have no right to force the banks to risk deposit holders’ and stockholders’ funds,” he said according to reports.

A heavy snow storm on March 30 seriously damaged crops in Armenia and farmers have asked for compensation. The row highlights just how important farming is in Armenia.

Rural Armenia is poor and the farmers often merely scrape a living. They are heavily reliant on loans and beneficial rates from the government.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 185, published on May 21 2014)