The assets being acquired are part of Uzbekneftegaz’s gas to liquid facility.

Air Products, a US-based industrial gases company, has signed a $1bn (UZS11.4bn) deal to purchase, own and operate a natural gas to syngas processing unit in Uzbekistan.

The gas processing plant, which is in the Qashqadaryo Province, is part of government-backed energy company Uzbekneftegaz’s gas to liquid (GTL) facility.

It is said to have a production capacity of 1.5 million tonnes per annum of high value added synthetic fuels for both domestic use and export.

Specifically, the agreement with the Uzbekistan government and the energy company contemplates the acquisition, ownership, and operation of two sizable air separation units, two auto-thermal reforming units, and a hydrogen production unit within the GTL complex.

Under a long-term contract, Air Products will supply oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, and syngas to UNG, while UNG will provide the necessary natural gas and utilities.

UNG will also buy all products from the plant.

Air Products chairman, president and CEO Seifi Ghasemi said: “With this strategic acquisition in Uzbekistan, a high-growth environment underpinned by strong government support, we will bring our best-in-class operational and supply competencies to bear.

“This will enable UNG to seamlessly produce low-cost, high-purity fuels that enable the Republic to meet its growing energy production and societal needs.”

Uzbekneftegaz chairman of the board Sidikov Bakhodirjon Bakhromovich said: “Using a combination of Uzbekneftegaz’s experience in processing natural gas into high value-added products and Air Products’ leadership in the implementation of mega projects, we are starting to work together to achieve common creative goals, such as increasing production efficiency, reducing the final cost of products and reduction of harmful emissions.”

Source: Offshore News

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The country’s Ministry of Environment and Tourism said this on Tuesday, March 21, 2023.

Under the auspices of the country’s President Ukhnaa Khurelsukh, a national conference to discuss the pressing issues in the forestry sector was held on Monday.

The conference was on the occasion of the International Day of Forests, the ministry said in a statement.

“Environmental problems are all interconnected.

“If we lose trees, we will lose water, air, soil and even life,’’ Minister of Environment and Tourism Bat-Ulzii Bat-Erdene said.

He urged the country’s forestry authorities and citizens to contribute to planting more trees and protecting the environment.

Mongolia has a total land area of 1,564,116 square km, only around 8 per cent of which is covered by forests.

About 77 per cent of the country’s total territory has been affected by desertification and land degradation, according to official data.

Therefore, the Asian country launched a nationwide tree-planting campaign “Billion Trees’’ initiated by the president in October 2021.

He said the tree planting was aimed to plant at least a billion trees by 2030 to combat desertification.

The country had planted more than 10 million trees across the country since the launch of the tree-planting campaign, according to the ministry.

Source : Enviro News Nigeria

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The Burden of Fetching Water

A water access, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) survey in 2017 found that two thirds of rural households in Tajikistan had no piped water supply.

Project data suggests that in almost 90% of these households, women and girls are solely responsible for water collection, which is physically demanding and comes at the expense of education, employment, and quality time with family. University student Fayzigul Qudustzodafrom Gulgasht village relays:

“I love to read literature, but I couldn’t find the time for reading because after school I had to fetch water. Now that we have a piped connection, I can spend more time on my studies, read, and learn new things. I’m so happy about that.”

Fayzigul lives in one of the 50,000 households in the Vose District recently connected to running water through the World Bank-financed Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Project (RWSS) that is focused on some of the poorest areas in the country’s southern Khalton Region.

Without running water, residents’ health is threatened. Nurse Rohila Qurbonova, from the neighboring Chorbog village, emphasized that most of the hygiene advice she provided to her patients did not make much sense without access to a clean water supply. She could not stop children from drinking water from open canals during the hot summer months, even though she knew that this exposed them to various waterborne diseases. And Rohila has observed that many women experienced pregnancy complications after lugging heavy 20-liter water buckets.

Poor sanitation and inadequate access to safe water is costly, much more so than investing in quality services and infrastructure—the investment gap to achieve adequate water and sanitation services in Tajikistan is 1.25% of GDP versus 4.25% of GDP in economic costs.

Large-Scale Investments Needed

Tajikistan is a water rich country, but its water infrastructure requires extensive investment. The country has the lowest share of population in Central Asia—around 55%—with access to safely managed water supply services. And there are serious disparities between urban and rural areas, with only 24% of Tajikistan’s rural population covered by piped water supply services. And where piped service does exist, the infrastructure is often old, largely dilapidated and has a limited capacity to expand to match population growth.

Tajikistan’s water supply sector faces significant challenges due to decades of underinvestment and a lack of proper operation and maintenance. According to estimates, Tajikistan will need a minimum investment of $800 million to ensure access to safe water supply services for the whole population by 2030. The country currently allocates around 0.2% of GDP from its annual budget to water supply and sanitation—significantly below the average of 1.5–2%in Europe and Central Asia.

Toward Better Health and Prosperity

That is why investments like RWSS create such impactful change in communities’ lives. Two water supply systems have already been modernised and expanded to supply 50,000 people across 17 villages of Vose with safe water piped to households, while another system is being tested to serve 21,000 more district residents Eventually, RWSS will connect around 400,000 rural inhabitants of Khatlon Region to piped water.

When Zarnigor Olimzoda, principal of Vose School No.2, moved with her husband to Vose from Dushanbe, there was no running water. As daughter-in-law, she was responsible for carrying water for her household from a nearby ditch. Every morning before going to school to teach chemistry and biology, she would fetch 100 buckets of water for their cattle and other livestock. After work she had to fetch water again. “I am ecstatic that even though it was difficult for me in the past, the younger generation of our community will no longer be affected by the lack of water.”

About 130 rural schools and health centers will receive access to piped water and improved sanitary facilities with RWSS support. Only half of rural schools in Tajikistan have access to running water, with almost 60% using pit latrines with slabs as toilets. And only 2% of schools have water available in girls’ lavatories for menstrual hygiene. Evidence globally suggests that poor WASH facilities in schools are likely to impact girls’ attendance, particularly at higher grades, leading to poorer learning outcomes and increased school dropouts.

Robiya Nazarova, who studies in Vose School No.2, believes that hot running water and privacy are a huge boost for school attendance—a view echoed by Principal Olimzoda: “The best thing is that we will have modern toilets with project support. Next to the toilets there will be hygiene rooms with hot and cold water essential for girls during menstruation.”

Changing Lives and Attitudes

Rallying community support and bolstering the capacity of national and local water supply institutions, which are integral components to RWSS, will help make new rural water supply and sanitation services sustainable–breaking a once vicious circle of low service quality, low willingness to pay, and underfunded operating budgets. Investments and institutional reforms coupled with public education and behaviour change campaigns targeting communities and schools are crucial in changing rural livelihoods, producing accountability, getting community buy-in and incentivizing reinvestment.

Zebogul Nazarova, head of the Okhjar village in Vose and the mother of 11 children, has been instrumental in organising community support for RWSS in her village. She stressed that residents “need to value clean water and raise funds to maintain the systems[because] it costs money to treat water and supply it.”

Farzona Mukhitdinova, the World Bank’s RWSS task team leader, says that the project “is not just about connecting households to piped water, but also about helping communities to appreciate, manage, and utilize water more effectively.” Looking forward, Farzona hopes that access to safe drinking water will create a foundation for investments to better living conditions of Tajikistan’s rural population: “Improved access to water will also contribute to the local economy by creating jobs for plumbers, water operators, electricians, and other important personnel needed to maintain the new infrastructure and provide essential services.”

Source : Relief Web

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The role of international aid institutions and development banks in the economically distressed Central Asian region has been undeniably positive for decades despite challenges. Donors have invested significant amounts of capital in infrastructure projects and development initiatives in the region since the 1990s. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) remains one of the more active banks providing funds for environmental projects to the governments and municipalities in the region. The EBRD is currently upgrading local waste management facilities in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, which is in line with the bank’s Green Cities policy tool. Essentially, the EBRD is facilitating the introduction of green technologies, waste recovery and recycling systems in both countries.

A Landfill Project in Bishkek

The bank provided a sovereign loan of 11 million euro and another grant in the sum of 3 million euro to the Kyrgyz Republic for a solid waste management project in Bishkek, a new landfill. The EBRD’s project documentation mentions an additional 8 million euro grant from an international donor for the project, bringing the project’s price tag to 22 million euro. The solid waste management project in Bishkek has yet to be finalized after its initial approval in 2013, when the loan agreement was signed.

The existing city landfill remains a source of ongoing air pollution in the vicinity. The existing dumpsite is the scene of a recurring landfill fire that increasingly takes place on the premises due to the decomposition of organic material producing easily ignited landfill gas. These fires are becoming more frequent during warm seasons as temperatures rise, peaking during the summer. 

Bishkek’s dumpsite has been in operation since 1978 with the original plan built around collecting and utilizing waste for a city with a population of 400,000. Today, the Kyrgyz capital has 1.2 million residents, and the size of its Soviet-built landfill has dramatically expanded, reaching nearly 50 hectares of land. Thus the EBRD project aimed at establishing a new landfill. The city’s public, civil society organizations and media remain vigilant regarding the project’s progress, but the city authorities have yet to explain the delay after the disbursement of 22 million euro to complete the new landfill project. 

Environmental activists blame the city administration and the country’s government agencies for failing to provide necessary permits and documents in a timely manner to the contractor company working on the landfill project implementation. “Such documents, according to the laws of the Kyrgyz Republic, are issued after approval of the project and the conclusion of the examination. Now the project has not been completed, and the initial version has not passed ecological expertise in the State Agency for Environmental Protection and Forestry,” said activist Bermet Borubayeva. 

Project Implementation Progress

The main reasons for such prolonged project implementation are seemingly the COVID-19 pandemic, the political impact of the overthrow of the country’s government in October 2020, alleged corruption involving city officials and endless red tape. Political instability in the Kyrgyz Republic has been a prevalent factor that continues to have a prolonged negative impact on the Central Asian nation’s governments. The country has seen the overthrow of governments on multiple occasions since 2005, while Cabinet changes are even more frequent. More than 30 prime ministers have served in office since 1991, when the nation gained its independence. 

The COVID-19 pandemic, and the quarantine restrictions put in place in 2020, have not necessarily delayed the project’s progress, but have contributed to an increase in the costs for the contractor. Moreover, excessive bureaucracy remains a critical issue due to delays after “data obtained as a result of additional research and modeling” by the contractor revealed that the official landfill area and actual landfill area proposed for reclamation differ in size. This required re-approval of the project documentation. Environmental activist Borubayeva wrote via email for this article that the “EBRD should have properly monitored the implementation of the waste management project and violations [in Bishkek].”

Environmental and Social Objectives of the Project

The existing landfill in Bishkek generates leachate with “high chain hydrocarbons, high chloride levels and relatively high biological oxygen demand” while there are “occasions of leachate overflow to the [Ala-Archa] river basin to the East of the site.” Activists and environmentalists argue that a lack of leachate treatment on the landfill premises is resulting in the “increased concentrations of phosphates entering surface waters and leading to eutrophication of the Ala-Archa reservoir water.” An EBRD assessment stated that recultivation of the existing dumpsite will “reduce potential groundwater and surface water pollution from the existing dump by reducing infiltration of water into the waste through recontouring, cover layers and restoration planting. Any remaining leachate produced will be intercepted and stored in a leachate lagoon where it will partly evaporate with any excess pumped to the leachate lagoon in the new extension landfill.”

However, these projections remain unattainable as the landfill project has yet to be completed and environmental analysis conducted upon collecting data on location. Worsening air quality in the city of Bishkek has become a critical matter for city residents as the country’s capital was listed in the “hazardous” group globally, with very unhealthy air quality in recent years. The latest United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) study on air quality in Bishkek noted that emission estimates for the landfill fires were not included in the report because of the landfill’s location outside the city. “Nevertheless, the landfill fire is reported to have a significant impact on the air quality near the landfill and is something that should be addressed as a priority.” Therefore, more research into air quality at the landfill project location and surroundings is recommended and the installation of air quality monitoring sensors in the area for better data analysis.

It is expected that the EBRD project will have a positive environmental and social impact on resolution of the longstanding issue involving the existing landfill dumpsite. However, it cannot be quantified now until the reclamation of the existing dumpsite and launch of the new landfill site take place in 2023 and a post-project impact study is conducted to understand the project results. The EBRD’s contribution to the project’s implementation progress is considerably significant as the bank has been invested in the project since 2013 and it’s plausible that without EBRD’s consultancy and funding, the city of Bishkek and the Kyrgyz authorities wouldn’t have the capacity nor expertise to manage such a complexity-ridden undertaking. 

Landfill Projects in Khorezm and Karakalpakstan regions of Uzbekistan

The government of Uzbekistan approached the EBRD for assistance with funding and implementation of waste management projects in the country’s Khorezm and Karakalpakstan regions. The bank allocated a sovereign loan to Uzbekistan of up to $120 million for the implementation of both projects. An EBRD environmental and social audit assessment revealed that the “project would not trigger physical displacement, however, could cause economic displacement impacts.” The report indicated that a Livelihood Restoration Framework (LRF) was prepared due to projected impacts to regulate and provide guidance for “land acquisition, compensation and livelihood restoration activities” in the future. 

The LRF stated that the EBRD consultants met with residents and have learned that farmers are “concerned with the possibility of terminating their leases and life-long inheritable possession rights or imposing land use restrictions, especially a prohibition of food crop cultivation.” For instance, about 63 hectares within the sanitary zone are “arable lands used for cultivation of rice, wheat, and corn” in the Bagat district of Khorezm region. Local households earn their income by growing crops while unemployment numbers are high in the project area. Therefore, the bank’s goal to resolve any potential grievances due to loss of income and access to farmland during project implementation in Uzbekistan is certainly a positive step toward the resolution of disputes. 

The country was featured in the global media in recent years after a rampant wave of forced evictions and questionable demolitions of private properties taking place in the nation’s major cities. The Uzbek authorities were criticized by global rights organizations for mass demolitions across the nation. “International human rights law requires that any process of expropriation or government acquiring of an individual’s property be subject to due process and appropriate and adequate compensation. Expropriation should never be arbitrary nor place an undue burden upon individuals,” stated Human Rights Watch in a report on events in Uzbekistan. The EBRD must ensure that preventative measures and conflict-resolution mechanisms are in place if property or land disputes arise. 

CEE Bankwatch representatives learned upon making a trip to Nukus, and the Turtkul and Karauzyak districts in the Karakalpakstan region, and meeting with community members that many residents in both districts outside the city of Nukus were unaware of the EBRD’s public consultation process and grievance resolution mechanism. Moreover, several locals expressed their concerns regarding possible ramifications for their well-being out of repercussions for voicing their complaints or critical views about the project. Community members indicated to the team of activists that neither the EBRD nor the project representatives have consulted with locals regarding the reconstruction and expansion of the existing dumpsites in the area. 

Activists took notice of the EBRD’s failure to uphold grievance mechanism compliance in the Turtkul and Karauzyak districts. For instance, contact details for the public grievance mechanism weren’t valid. And while some grievances were raised with local authorities, they remain unanswered. Respectively, such discrepancies regarding dysfunctional grievance mechanisms on the ground and at the project level may lead to unresolved social traction in the long run, especially in the reprisal-prone environment as the CEE Bankwatch team witnessed in the project locations of Karakalpakstan region. 

The team was unable to visit sites in the Khorezm region due to time and travel constraints. Therefore, the project progress in the Khorezm region couldn’t be independently verified. However, previous analysis of the EBRD’s environmental and social impact assessment by the Uzbekistan-based activists in 2021 revealedmultiple concerns regarding the projects in Khorezm’s Kushkupyrsky and Bogdatskiy districts. Specifically, activists highlighted that the project design didn’t include “waste segregation for excluding toxic substances, decreasing the volume of disposable waste” and a lack of “proposals for incentivizing recycling and capturing biogas”. Concerns were also expressed regarding potential air pollution and the lack of “data for greenhouse gas emissions and their cumulative impact.” 

Subsequently, it is unlikely that the Uzbek authorities would provide more transparency regarding the projects’ implementation progress. In such a case, EBRD could step in to ensure that the information on the waste management projects in both regions of Uzbekistan can be accessible for local and international groups. 

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