In Tashkent, a new Interim Regional Secretariat on deserts will be established. This is the result of a CADI Regional Workshop held by the FAO in Tashkent on 22-23 October with representatives from Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
The Secretariat aims to preserve the biodiversity and ecosystem services of the temperate deserts in Central Asia.
For an interim period, the Regional Secretariat will receive financial and administrative support through the CADI project and the State Committee on Forestry of the Republic of Uzbekistan. A Steering Committee as a decision-making body will be linked to the Regional Secretariat, as well as National Secretariats in the participating countries Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
The aim is to turn the interim secretariat into a broadly accepted and effective structure that is permanently anchored in the region and will continue the Central Asian Desert Initiative (CADI) beyond the end of CADI project.
In a Tashkent Declaration, the participants agreed on the future mandate of the Secretariat and the framework of a preliminary Programme of Work (PoW).
Article about the workshop (in Russian) in gazeta.uz
Oleg Kugaev
M. Pestov