March 22 was World Water Day, and we had intended to devote the podcast to the subject. However, due to the resignation of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev officially on March 20, the Majlis podcast was swept along by the news.
So, this week, here goes.….
Nothing is more valuable in Central Asia than water. There was never much water in the region, and there is even less of it now. And with the region’s population growing rapidly, water promises to be an increasingly pressing issue for Central Asia in the coming years.
RFE/RL's Media-Relations Manager Muhammad Tahir moderated a discussion on water supplies and water use in Central Asia.
From Tashkent, Helena Fraser, the UN resident coordinator for Uzbekistan, participated in the discussion. From Colombo, Sri Lanka, we were joined by senior researcher at the International Water Management Institute, Soumya Balasubramanya. From Washington, D.C., environmental activist and former deputy chief at Iran’s Department of Environment, Kaveh Madani, took part in the talk. I’ve been upstream and downstream in Central Asia, so I had a couple of things to say.
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Majlis Podcast: Central Asia’s Most Precious Resource: Water
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