Europe and CIS environment and energy practitioners meet in Istanbul
ASTANA. KAZINFORM Practitioners in the area of environment and energy from Europe and the CIS met to present their developments and share experience in Istanbul on annual Meeting of Practitioners (MOP).
The meeting was attended by experts and representatives of international organizations from Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan), Croatia, Georgia, Istanbul, Kosovo Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Ukraine, the UNDP Kazakhstan said. Agenda for three days included such topics as political and economic development in Europe and CIS (ECIS), Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMA) and their interlinks in development of the region, strengthening gender mainstreaming and gender equality, opportunities of East-East cooperation, issues of biodiversity, land degradation and ecosystems protection, fight against pollution, water management and adaptation to climate change and disaster risk reduction. The representatives of UNDP Programme for Climate Risk Management in Central Asia (CA-CRM) presented practices of regional cooperation and highlighted a strong need in international partnership in solving of any issues discussed in the meeting. The Regional Coordinator of UNDP CA-CRM Programme, Mr. Yegor Volovik stated: "Climate risk management is a striking example of necessity in inter-agency, cross-disciplinary and cross-border levels of cooperation..." According to Mr. Volovik, the efficiency of individual initiatives aimed at addressing the individual, unrelated issues of livelihoods in individual sectors of the economy, today are deemed insufficient by default. "...Contemporary challenges that Central Asian countries are facing today, have a pronounced global or regional nature, and therefore, require coordinated actions to mitigate the negative impact of climate change and frequent natural disasters and extreme weather events. Measures developed and implemented at the level of individual countries should be developed and implemented through coordinated regional strategies and appropriate programmes and action plans," he added.