Eurasian River Basin Portal

16.02.2017

December 7, 2016, Almaty hosted the second meeting of Regional Steering Committee (RSC) of Smart Waters project financed by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and «Promoting dialogue for conflict prevention related to environment, water nexus issues in Central Asia: Central Asia Water-Nexus Cooperation» (CAWECOOP) implemented with the support of the European Union.

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Regional Steering Committee monitors and evaluates the implementation of CAREC projects on water issues and makes recommendations at the regional level.

The main function of the Steering Committee – to discuss regularly a progress of the projects implementation at the regional level, including achievements, challenges, obstacles and risks, and planned activities for the next period. Establishment of the Steering Committee is an effective mechanism for good management with high quality of the projects. Steering Committee consists of the representatives from the National Supervisory Councils of the partner organizations, universities, advanced studies institutes, academia from the project target countries.

Overall, there were 40 participants – members of RSC, representing ministries, which are engaged in water resources management issues, irrigation, energy, environmental protection, all target countries of the projects, CAREC staff, as well as representatives of the regional office and missions of USAID in Central Asia and Afghanistan. 

The meeting consisted of two sections:

- During the first half of the day the progress on Smart Waters project was discussed. Ms Yekaterina Strikeleva, Manager of the project presented the conceptual vision of the implementation of each component out of four in total. Moreover, the conceptual framework of mentoring for students was presented, as well as the basic concept of trainings, new approaches and involvement of academia into water resources management process. The focus was done on the support of national and international events; the principles of work in pilot transboundary basins were discussed. At the end of this session, the general Work Plan 2017 for the next year of implementation was presented for review and comments from participants, which was added by the national inputs from all countries.  

- After a lunch, the session was aimed to discuss CAWECOOP project. Within the presentation of Work Plan 2017 the specialist of the project, Ms Tais Reznikova introduced participants with the conceptual vision of interactive map on capacity building in Central Asian countries on best practices of water, energy and land usage in the region within the third Component of CAWECOOP. The development of these products is one of the expected results, which will allow generating the united database on all programs and projects implemented in the region for the last years for better planning and coordination between national partners and international institutions.   

The new opportunities for cooperation in the framework of current USAID project and «Partnership Program for active cooperation in scientific research» (PEER) were discussed, as well as for the World Bank «Central Asian Mitigation Program for Aral Sea Basin» (CAMP4ASB), which are implemented by CAREC.

As a result of the meetings, representatives of the countries shared their comments on work plans for both projects, which will be considered by CAREC and reflected in the final version of the plans.

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The meeting took place after the International Conference "Environmental Cooperation and Sustainable Development in Central Asia" in the framework of the 15th anniversary of CAREC.

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