JULY 11 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Central Asian countries need to improve cooperation along the Amu Darya, the region’s longest river, to avoid future conflicts over water supply, the United Nations Environmental Programme said in a new report. Overuse and climate change have diminished the river which mainly irrigates Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 48, published on July 12 2011)
JUNE 23 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Central Asia is facing a drought that will not only hit cotton and food production but also heighten tension across the region, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) said. UNDP said that Water levels are a third lower than average in important reservoirs in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 46, published on June 28 2011)
MAY 9 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh environmentalist said 12-15 dead seals have washed up on the shores of the Caspian Sea over the last week, media reported. In the past 10 years environmentalists have blamed offshore energy developments and overfishing for hundreds of seal deaths. The Kazakh government, though, has blamed viruses.
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(News report from Issue No. 39, published on May 9 2011)
DEC. 15 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) — A US diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks revealed how in September 2008 a gas leak forced BP to evacuate 211 workers from one of its biggest oil drilling platforms in the Azeri sector of the Caspian Sea. The cable said BP tried to limit public information of the gas leak which shut down part of production at the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli field.
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(News report from Issue No. 20, published on Dec. 20 2010)
SEPT. 27 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan banned the export of buckwheat, a favourite cereal in the former Soviet Union, because of shortages caused by a summer drought. It also said the drought had hit its grain harvest which would only be 13.5m tonnes this year, the bottom end of previous forecasts.
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(News report from Issue No. 9, published on Sept. 30 2010)
SEPT. 14 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) — Fire fighters in Kazakhstan extinguished forest fires which had threatened to spread to Russia. The fires in northern Kazakhstan had been burning for a week.
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(News report from Issue No. 7, published on Sept. 16 2010)
SEPT. 9 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) — Dry and windy weather fanned forest fires in the Pavlodar region of northern Kazakhstan. The fires killed at least 6 people and spread to Siberia in Russia. Rain is forecast. Russia has fought a series of forest fires this summer which have severely damaged its grain harvest.
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(News report from Issue No. 6, published on Sept. 9 2010)