On March 5, 2024, the first meeting was held online to strengthen the capacity of regional and national water sector specialists in the field of IWRM within the framework of the regional project “Climate Sensitive Water Resources Management in Central Asia”. Representatives of higher education institutions from Central Asia and Europe took part in the meeting. European higher education institutions were represented by the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) and Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETH Zürich). From Central Asia the meeting was attended by: Al-Farabi Kazakh National University; Kyrgyz National Agrarian University named after. K. I. Scriabin; Kyrgyz State Technical University named after I. Razzakov; Academy of Public Administration under the President of the Republic of Tajikistan; Turkmen Agricultural University named after. S. A. Niyazov; National Research University “Tashkent Institute of Irrigation and Agricultural Mechanization Engineers”, as well as representatives of the Regional Environmental Center of Central Asia (CAREC).
The regional project “Climate Sensitive Water Resources Management in Central Asia” was presented to the participants, namely, the goals and objectives of the project as a whole, and particularly for the second component: capacity building of regional and national water sector specialists in the field of IWRM were announced.
The participants exchanged teaching experiences and methods of training specialists in the water sector in Central Asia and Europe and discussed further cooperation.
For reference: As part of the “Green Central Asia” initiative of the German Federal Government, in accordance with the regional action plan agreed by the countries of Central Asia in November 2021, GIZ began implementing a regional project “Climate Sensitive Water Resources Management in Central Asia” in 2023, funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) with co-financing from the Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation (SDC).
The main goal of the regional project is to strengthen the capacity of national and regional organizations responsible for water resources management to implement coordinated water resources management considering climate impacts at the regional and national levels.
One of the objectives of the project is to strengthen the capacity of specialists from regional and national basin organizations in the field of climate-sensitive integrated water resources management. To achieve this goal, the project, with the participation of higher education institutions from Germany, Switzerland, and Central Asia, plans to develop a climate- and gender-sensitive training module and methodological materials on IWRM for regional and national basin organizations.
