UNESCO has expressed concern over the plans of Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan to develop the natural territory of the Western Tien Shan.
According to a statement from the Public Foundation "Rivers Without Borders," this concern was raised following a visit by a joint mission from UNESCO and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to these countries. The mission was organized in response to the plans of the three countries and to assess the current state of the transboundary World Natural Heritage site "Western Tien Shan."
According to "Rivers Without Borders," illegal gold mining is taking place in the Chatkal district of Kyrgyzstan, and there are plans to construct a hydroelectric power station (HPP) on the Chatkal River, which would flood protected floodplain lands and include the construction of a transit highway along the reservoir between Talas, Chatkal, and Tashkent.
In neighboring Kazakhstan, local authorities have presented a project for a cascade of hydroelectric power plants with reservoirs on the Ugam River, part of whose flow would be diverted into a 210-kilometer pipeline to supply other areas of the Turkestan region of the republic.
"In Uzbekistan, both the Chatkal and Ugam rivers, which flow from the World Heritage site, have already been dammed. As experts from 'Rivers Without Borders' recently confirmed on-site, bulldozers and excavators are destroying the Ugam Riverbed, forcing it into an artificial channel and encasing it in concrete. This destruction is being carried out to build three small hydroelectric stations with a total capacity of about 5 MW, which could wipe out populations of rare and endemic fish species that once inhabited this small mountain river," the foundation's statement said.
The statement also quotes Yevgeny Simonov, the lead specialist of "Rivers Without Borders," who noted that dam projects downstream of World Heritage sites require environmental impact assessments coordinated with UNESCO, which likely was not the case with the Chatkal and Ugam rivers.
The transnational property is located in the Tien-Shan mountain system, one of the largest mountain ranges in the world. Western Tien-Shan ranges in altitude from 700 to 4,503 m. It features diverse landscapes, which are home to exceptionally rich biodiversity. It is of global importance as a center of origin for a number of cultivated fruit crops and is home to a great diversity of forest types and unique plant community associations.
Western Tian Shan is characterized by a high level of endemism and rich flora and fauna. The region is included in the UNESCO world heritage list. It is one of the 34 global Biodiversity Hotspots and is included in the world Ecoregion rating of Global 200 according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). The territory of the Western Tian Shan is inhabited by 27 species of animals that are on the verge of extinction and 54 red book species of plants grow here.
