I recently joined a visit by a UN team to the Ust-Yurt plateau in Karakalpakstan. The UN were there in connection with their joint programme that works on education, health, prosperity and environment issues in Karakalpakstan. For me it was an opportunity to find out more about the UN’s work here but also to see a little of an unfamiliar and remote part of the country.
On the first day we visited UzKor Gas Chemicals, an Uzbek Korean joint venture where impressive progress is being made in building a large and modern polyethylene and polypropylene factory, one of the biggest investment projects in Uzbekistan. I was pleased to see that in a number of areas the project is using British expertise – legal, environmental and financial.
Later the same day we camped near the Sudochye Lake, one of the areas in Uzbekistan identified as an Important Bird Area, and a potential candidate for Ramsar Site status (the Ramsar Convention is an international agreement on the conservation of wetlands). What we saw there fully justified those designations: huge numbers of waterbirds including species that are rare internationally or in Uzbekistan, and a beautiful patchwork of reed-beds and open water. But despite its current vitality this is a very fragile environment. Its survival is dependent on maintaining the inflow of water to the lake, on minimising the impact of industry and infrastructure development, and on controlling access to the area and activity within it.
Further north, we visited a weather station belonging to the Uzbek hydrometeorological authority, Uzgidromet, where staff take three-hourly measurements to feed back into the central system that tracks weather and climate across the country. On the plateau itself, though it is a dry and hostile desert habitat, life is nevertheless abundant – everywhere we stopped we heard a chorus of bird song, and we saw tortoises, butterflies, suslik and foxes. But the sea itself, what’s left of it, appeared entirely dead.
While the plight of the Aral Sea is well-known, the fragile beauty of the Ust-Yurt Plateau is less famous, but there is much there that deserves vigorous protection. It was a privilege to be able to visit.