UN Chronicle | DevelopmentWatch - 'Nothing Is Closer Than Tomorrow'

DevelopmentWatch
'Nothing Is Closer Than Tomorrow'
By Kassymzhomart K. Tokaev

Article

History has witnessed many examples where a shortage of water suitable for drinking and irrigation resulted in clashes between people and States, and quite often many thousands of people were forced to abandon their territories because of water problems. Kazakhstan, a country primarily composed of deserts and semi-arid regions, knows the price of pure water better than anybody. According to United Nations data, Kazakhstan belongs to a category of countries with very low availability of water resources per capita. By the year 2025, the situation might deteriorate further still.

The Government of Kazakhstan, which fully shares the concern of the international community about the present and future situation regarding access to safe sources of drinking water, considers the initiative important and appropriate in light of the Johannesburg Summit. We support the judgement of UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs Nitin Desai that "the subject of water was probably the most successful of the Summit". In this connection, we welcome the initiatives of the European Union, Japan and the United States, as well as of several regional banks, offering substantial financial investment for the development of the water sector in the developing and least developed countries of Africa and Asia. We are also looking forward to the results of the forthcoming third World Water Forum, to be held in Kyoto in March 2003. We believe that the initiative of Japan to call such a representative international conference will serve as an important element in the process of finding solutions to water problems.

Destiny decreed that Kazakhstan would be endowed with huge reserves of natural and especially energy resources, which are under the non-renewable category and are the property of all future generations, the general well-being of whom will depend upon, among other things, the skill of our generation in investing the income from sales of petroleum and natural gas. Understanding this, President Nursultan Nazarbaev, in a decree of 23 August 2000, established the "National Fund of the Republic of Kazakhstan".

The purpose of the Fund is to maintain the stable social and economic development of the country, accumulate financial assets for future generations of citizens, and reduce the effects of unfavourable external factors on Kazakhstan's economy. As of today, the Fund's assets total about $2 billion.

The World Summit on Sustainable Development, which ended its work in early September 2002 in Johannesburg (South Africa), has, in effect, confirmed once again a well-known truth, which to my mind is most deeply reflected in a Kazakh proverb: "Nothing is farther away than yesterday, nothing is closer than tomorrow".

The twentieth century that is now history has left behind a great variety of social, economic, political and ecological problems, which are no longer connected to our past but are subject to doubt about our future—a future in which our children and grandchildren can be deprived of the right to live in a world free of today's vices, such as polluted air, dirty water, famine, sickness, wars caused by poverty and extremism, and the growing divide between poor and rich countries.

The conclusions of the Brundtland Commission, which provided a methodological and conceptual basis for decisions adopted in the framework of the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (Earth Summit) in Rio de Janeiro, fixed the concept of "sustainable development" in the modern political lexicon as a model of social and economic development helping to satisfy the vital needs of the present generation without depriving future generations of such possibility. Stable economic growth, which does not result in such degradation of the natural environment as would threaten a decent level of life for future generations, became one of the main items on the agenda of the new century. The means of solving the problem are not yet clear, and the outcomes of the Johannesburg Summit remind us once again that the road to the realization of sustainable development will never and nowhere be smooth or easy.

Ten years ago, the Rio Earth Summit defined the main principles of sustainable development and made a start to the process of realizing the goals incorporated in Agenda 21. In the same year, my country entered its first year of independent existence as a sovereign State and member of the family of the international community of nations.

It therefore came about that the Rio Summit was one of the first major international events in which Kazakhstan enjoyed equal participation. A wise man once observed that if you do not know where you are going, any road might lead you there. In this regard, we find a certain symbolism in the fact that our young State has taken its first steps on a road that is now being paved with our participation—a road along which the only alternative paths would lead to the abyss of social, economic, political and ecological catastrophe.

With this in mind, Kazakhstan has set itself the task of constantly taking a model of the future as the overall picture in which the concrete short-term goals reside. Before taking any steps, we must constantly check to see whether we are moving in the right direction or losing track, moving events along or lagging behind. The results of the Rio Summit provided this model to all of us as a reference point for reaching a new global civilization characterized by harmony between two principles that were considered antagonistic: protection of the environment, and social and economic development.

With respect to Kazakhstan, strategic planning became an extremely important tool in creating a development model in the light of the principles and goals of Rio.

The understanding that success in social and economic transformation depends to a large degree on the country's ecological policy has been reflected in government decisions and in the long-term development strategy up to 2030, approved by the Kazakhstan President, including the "Strategy on the Ecology and Natural Resources-2030" (Decree, 28 January 1998). Its main goal is to harmonize the interaction between society and the environment, and create an ecologically favourable habitat. To achieve this, four priority directions have been selected: creation of an ecologically safe environment; balanced use of natural resources; preservation of variety in fauna and flora; and ecological education.

After ten years of structural economic reforms, Kazakhstan had achieved noticeable outcomes in its development, which had reached a trajectory of sustainable growth. For the last two years, the cumulative gross national product grew by 46 per cent and more than 70 per cent of the State budget was directed to servicing the social sector.

At the same time, considering the urgency of internal policy aimed at the growth of main economic and social parameters, the country's leaders perfectly understood that such ecological problems as the catastrophe of the Aral Sea would only be aggravated with time.

Sources: Nikolai Denisov, GRID-Arendal, Norway; Scientific Information Center of International Coordination Water Commission (SIC ICWC); International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea (IFAS); the World Bank; National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); United States Geological Survey (USGS), Earthshots: Satellite images of environmental change, United States Department of the Interior, 2000.

Further unfortunate forced neglect of this problem will, in a few years, vastly reduce the possibility of finding an acceptable solution. We can now say that with the improvement of the economic situation in Kazakhstan, the time has come for more steadfast attention on the part of the Government to the most acute ecological problem—the Aral Sea—not only for our country, but also for the Central Asian region as a whole. The Aral Sea, which used to be the second largest landlocked reservoir in the world, is dying before our eyes, turning into two separate saltwater lakes. This tragedy dramatically changed the way of life of more than 4 million people living in neighbouring Central Asian countries and caused drastic deterioration in the socio-economic situation in the region.
(See also 'Dry Tears of the Aral', Chronicle, Issue 1, 1999.)

In 1993, the Presidents of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan established the International Foundation to Save the Aral Sea (IFSAS), with the purpose of developing a programme of action to stabilize the situation in the region within the framework of sustainable development. With this purpose, the Interstate Commission on Sustainable Development (ICSD) was created and entrusted with the task of evaluating the situation and developing sustainable development indicators.

Studies conducted by ICSD, inter alia, formed the basis of a recent decision by IFSAS Heads of State to initiate, within the United Nations framework, a commission on the problems of the Aral Sea. This idea was in principle supported by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in the course of his October 2002 visit to the Central Asian region. Kazakhstan, as the country hardest hit by the Aral Sea catastrophe, gives special significance to the problem of implementing the initiative and realizing a series of measures on the part of the international community to mitigate the social, economic and ecological consequences of this regional phenomenon.

Another major social and ecological problem is the situation around the former Semipalatinsk testing site, which for decades served as a venue for numerous nuclear tests. This vast territory-contaminated by radioactive pollution—and its inhabitants became a focus of attention by the Government from the time of Kazakhstan's independence. As in the case of the Aral Sea basin, the irreversible degradation of land at the former testing site worsened the situation in the region of Semipalatinsk. At the same time, much has been done and is still being done by both the Kazakh authorities and the international community to mitigate the consequences of this man-made human catastrophe. The Kazakh leadership especially appreciates the help rendered by the United Nations and the Government of Japan, which granted the necessary technical and financial assistance to the people of the Semipalatinsk region. In order to coordinate the activities of the international community in rendering effective help to the citizens suffering as a result of the nuclear testing, the UN General Assembly adopted a pertinent resolution put forward by Kazakhstan and supported by a large number of Member States.

UN Photo

The Assembly, in resolution 55/196, proclaimed 2003 the International Year of Fresh Water. The initiative of the Government of Tajikistan to draw the international community's attention to the problems of access to and preservation of safe drinking water resources had found broad understanding among Member States, as was confirmed by the record number of co-sponsors of the resolution.

UN Photo

The two-month period after the Johannesburg Summit was characterized by a certain calm in the ranks of politicians, economists, ecologists and other participants in the sustainable development process who needed some time to analyze its results. This time was also required for striking a reasonable compromise between the interests of the developed and developing countries. Only now is it becoming clear that the concept of social and economic development and the protection of the environment put forward in Rio is still far from practical reality. For decades, progress was slower than was necessary to solve the problem. As a result, as President Nazarbaev mentioned in his speech in Johannesburg, "mankind, despite obvious scientific and technical progress, could not get rid of vices that have pursued it throughout history: poverty, famine, sickness and destructive wars".

We also consider that the solution of the principal ecological problems should remain a cornerstone in a structure of our common house, and the prevention of irreversible damage to the environment so as to save vital resources for our offspring should be a major focus of attention. In this connection, I would like once again to draw the attention of the global community to President Nazarbaev's appeal to the United Nations to establish a register of global ecological problems, together with concrete recommendations for mobilizing large-scale financial, technical and profile resources to solve them.

Kazakhstan considers that the global community as a whole should stand up and face the problems and challenges. Sustainable development is not merely a group of words, but a formula for the survival of mankind.

Biography

Kassymzhomart K. Tokaev is Secretary of State and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Kazakhstan. From October 1999 to January 2002, he served as Prime Minister and since 1975 has held various senior posts with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He has also written several publications.

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