Tag Archives: environment

Editorial: Kazakh capital’s lake

APRIL 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A stinky lake is apparently keeping Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev awake at night.

This week, he reprimanded the mayor of Astana, Adilbek Dzhaksybekov for his inability to get rid of a stench emanating from the Taldykol lake, just behind Nazarbayev University’s shiny new buildings.

Everything in Astana must be pristine, all the more because next year Kazakhstan’s capital will host EXPO-2017, an occasion for Mr Nazarbayev to project a prosperous image for his country.

If Mr Dzhaksybekov cannot clean up the air near Taldykol, Mr Nazarbayev threatened to have him transferred in a yurt on the lakeshore.

Mr Nazarbayev has grown increasingly wary of excessive government spending, as the regional economic downturn hit the country hard. For the first time in more than a decade, the country’s GDP might shrink in 2016.

Public shaming is not unusual in Kazakhstan and state television is not adverse to showing Mr Nazarbayev bashing sheepish officials, who, terrified, have to listen to the veteran leader’s rantings.

ENDS

(Editorial from Issue No. 278, published on April 29 2016)

Ex-Georgian PM buys a giant tree and sails if down the Black Sea coast

MARCH 24 2016, TBILISI (The Conway Bulletin) — Bidzina Ivanishvili is known in Georgia through his many different guises. He is a former PM and the de facto leader of the Georgian Dream ruling coalition. He is a billionaire and the country’s richest man. He collects fine art, such as Picasso’s, and keeps a personal zoo of exotic animals, such as penguins, zebras and sharks.

Now, courting more headlines and controversy, can be added the title of tree lover, or tree thief, depending on your point of view.

Pictures from Georgia showed workmen digging up and then moving by barge a 135-year-old tulip tree, the height of a 12-storey build- ing, 30km along the Black Sea coast to Mr Ivanishvili’s garden at one of his homes.

This prompted a barrage of outrage on social media across Georgia as well as from tree experts who questioned whether the tree would survive.

German forestry expert Walter Benneckendorf said the tree would die. “Theoretically it is possible to replant even older trees, but only if it would have been replanted every five years, so the roots are used to it,” he told the Conway Bulletin. “Replanting a 135-year-old tree without the previous measure will result without a question in the tree’s death.”

Activists also said there were only a few dozen tulip trees left in Georgia.

Still in televised remarks, Mr Ivanishvili said that he paid for the tree legally.

“Giant trees are my hobby. I am developing a park where I think it is appropriate,” he said without a trace of irony.

Either way, people on the Black Sea coast were, for a day, treated to the sight of an upright tree apparently sailing serenely along Georgia’s shoreline.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)

Armenian hydro snatches market share

MARCH 5 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia’s overall electricity production was 5.2% higher in January compared to January 2015, mostly due to the sharp increase in hydropower generation.

While traditional sources of power such as thermal and nuclear increased only marginally, production from hydropower and small hydropower stations grew by 23.7%, according to Armenia’s Statistics Committee.

Small hydroelectric plants, in particular, have heavily increased their contribution to Armenia’s total power output.

Small hydropower plants are defined in Armenia as power plants that generate up to 30 MW. In Armenia there are now 173 small hydropower plants, more than twice as many as there were in 2010 and six times more than in 1991. Today, they account for around 9% of the country’s power generation.

Individual entrepreneurs, including many people linked to government officials and ministers, have driven the rise in these small hydro- power stations, building along rivers and generating power which links straight into the national grid.

But while the government has welcomed the rise in small hydro- power stations, anti-corruption campaigners have linked them to money laundering and corruption and environmentalists have said that they are damaging rivers’ eco-systems and creating eye-sores.

“Critics say the plants already in operation are sucking up most of the water in the river system, destroying traditional trout fisheries and depriving area residents of reliable access to water,” Kristine Aghalaryan said in report in the Hetq newspaper.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)

Tajik President warns of droughts

MARCH 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon warned people that reservoirs in Tajikistan were low because of a relatively dry winter and that droughts were likely this summer. It’s unusual for Mr Rakhmon to give drought warnings. Tajikistan’s rivers feed downstream Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, meaning that droughts would have knock-on consequences and could strain bilateral relations.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 270, published on March 4 2016)

Editorial: Kyrgyz and Georgian greens vs developers

MARCH 4 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Green spaces in cities across Central Asia and the South Caucasus are rare and under threat.

This is the case in Kyrgyzstan, where developers are eyeing up the, admittedly dysfunctional and overgrown Botanical Gardens. Conservationists, however, scored a major victory this week with the visit of PM Temir Sariyev to the Gardens. He spoke about renovating the Gardens and giving the structure a modern look, effectively saying the government wants the Gardens to stay where it is.

This is good and should be applauded. While Bishkek needs more space to build houses for people heading to the city for work, it can find this in other places. The Bishkek Botanical Garden should be left alone.

There is less hope for the surrounding hills of Tbilisi’s Old Town, where former PM Bidzina Ivanishvili wants to build a series of hotels. Locals took to the streets this week to protest against the plan.

Careful consideration needs to be given between creating jobs and attracting business over residents’ access to outdoor areas.

ENDS

(Editorial from Issue No. 270, published on March 4 2016)

Kazakhstan’s EXPO-2017 cuts budget

JAN. 26 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) -The organisers of Kazakhstan’s flagship EXPO-2017 event have cut its budget by 53b tenge ($140m) to keep pace with demands from the government to slash spending during this period of low oil revenue. Previously, nothing had seemingly been too expensive or too extravagant for EXPO-2017.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 265, published on Jan. 29 2016)

Central Asia’s largest botanicals garden in Kyrgyzstan withers

NOV. 6 2015, BISHKEK (The Conway Bulletin)– Famed across the Soviet Union as the biggest and most beautiful of Central Asia’s formal gardens, the Botanical Garden in Bishkek is now, quite literally, dying.

Once a peaceful sanctuary of bright exotic flowers and their perfumed scents, the 152 hectare Botanical Garden is overgrown and decrepit.

There are few visitors and even fewer staff. Most left in the 1990s when the Soviet Union collapsed, dragging down people’s salaries too. Now just a handful of under-paid scientists tend to the garden.

A weather-beaten Dmitry Vetoshkin, was one of these.

“For such a small city as Bishkek having a Botanical Garden is a luxury,” he said. But it’s a luxury that is under increased threat.

Kyrgyzstan’s capital is growing and has swallowed up the Botanical Garden. It once lay on the southeast fringe

of the city. Now, it is ringed by busy road and houses. Property developers are pinching parcels of land to build houses and gardens.

But for most people, the political elite included, the fate of the Botanical Garden is of little concern. “While political parties promise to improve people’s lives during current election campaign, none of them

announced a course to take up and renovate our natural heritage, our Botanical Garden, that stands at the entrance of the city,” said Vetoshkin.

Kyrgyzstan held a parliamentary election on Oct. 4.

There has though, despite the lack of support from the political elite, been some sort of grassroots resistance against selling off or giving away the Botanical Garden to developers. Vetoshkin said citizen power helped to defeat a proposal from developers to build new greenhouses in exchange for taking a large slice of the garden to develop.

Even so, the reprieve may just be temporary. It’s difficult to see just where the Botanical Garden fits into modern Bishkek life.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)

NASA publishes mysterious earthworks in Kazakhstan

OCT. 6 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – NASA published satellite pictures of earthworks found in north Kazakhstan which have baffled scientists. The photos of the Turgai region show massive stone circles. It’s unclear exactly what they represent, how old they are or who built them.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)

Uzbek authorities plan Aral Sea salvage

SEPT. 7 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbekistan will spend $4.3b over the next three years improving living conditions around the Aral Sea, media reported. The Aral Sea had been the fourth largest lake in the world but upstream Soviet irrigation policies diverted water from its tributary rivers and shrunk it to a fraction of its former size.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)

Despair hangs in the air in rural Azerbaijan

SHARABASH/Azerbaijan, SEPT. 11 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — In northwest Azerbaijan, rain coated the mountain-ringed village of Sarabash with a glossy sheen. Walnut trees glistened and the smell of grass lifted up from the wet fields. It was 8am on a weekday morning but there were no signs of commerce or industry. Just silence.

Remote and cut-off, Sarabash was not connected to the rest of Azerbaijan by road until the 1970s. Today, the track is rock-strewn and rough and the villagers feel, once again, as though they have been forgotten.

The Soviet-era collective farming system, and their livelihoods, have collapsed. Baku and its environs may glow from a beautifying oil boom that has made Azerbaijan rich over the past decade but rural areas have been left behind. Sarabash feels forgotten.

Before the fall of the Soviet Union, collective farms did well up here. In the 1960s there were 40,000 cows and dozens of farming families.

The pair of crumbling statues that stand in the fields are testament to this. They represent the two shepherds who played a part in the village being given a Communist award in 1964. Since independence the villagers admit they have fallen on hard times. Only 40 people – and one shepherd – remain.

When the school principal, Migdav Sofiev, grimaced he revealed his full set of gold teeth. He shook his head and described the desolate state of the village.

“There are only seven children at the village school and when they leave, it will close,” he said.

By comparison the town of Qax lies just 45-minutes away from Sarabash. Throughout the summer there holidaymakers eat in garishly decorated restaurants while their children play in bowling alleys and on bouncy castles.

Over a glass of ayran, a thin, sour yogurt drink; some mountain honey; a disc of tandoor-baked bread, villagers said that despite the untouched mountain scenery it is extremely rare for foreigners to visit. Tourists are keener on the amenities in Qax and they don’t bother to come either.

A sense of resigned despair lingered over the breakfast table.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)