DUSHANBE, October 22, 2008, Asia-Plus — Tajik parliament ratified the Kyoto Protocol yesterday.
Prime Minister Oqil Oqilov remarked this today, while addressing the conference on “Clean Energy: New Opportunities of Development of Renewable and Alternative Energy Resources in Tajikistan.”
“Tajikistan is just starting large-scale events dedicated to improvement environmental protection measures, especially prevention of greenhouse effect and we call on international community to provide assistance to our country in this direction,” the prime minister said.
He also noted that one of the main problems in that direction was processing of mining wastes that were legacy of the Soviet time already. “Tajikistan cannot tackle this problem without support of international community,” Oqilov said.
PM added that ratification of the Kyoto Protocol would help work out new projects for development of hydropower, which is ecologically safe. “Our country develops hydropower in the interests of the entire Central Asian region,” said Oqilov, “Tajikistan’s reserves of water and power resources are estimated at 527 billion kWh per annum; however, we now use only 5 percent of them.”
