Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct.11
By Nargiz Sadikhova - Trend:
The European Union (EU) will remain committed to work with Kazakhstan to help the country in its switch to a 'green' economy model, a EU official told Trend.
“The EU actively supports Kazakhstan’s ambition to switch to a green economy model, a key priority for the EU and the Kazakh government,” the official said.
He reminded that until the end of 2018, the EU had a bilateral program in place “Supporting Kazakhstan’s Transition to Green economy in place”. The specific objectives of the program were: to contribute to sustainable water management policies and practices; to promote a modernized environmental governance system aimed at generating incentives for the transition to a Green Economy (GE) model with focus on water resources and climate change; to promote the GE transition at local level with focus on water resources and climate change.
The program was being implemented during the period from April 2015 to November 2018 and its total cost was 7.10 million euro.
“In parallel, several EU regional programs benefiting Kazakhstan and the other four Central Asian countries, promote the transition to a green and circular economy. Notably, these are the newly-launched SWITCH program and WECOOP (high-level policy dialogue platform on environment climate change and water). Investments are also increasingly important to achieve green Sustainable Development Goals,” the EU source noted.
Thus, the EU has launched the SWITCH-Asia Program in 2007 to support sustainable consumption and production (SCP) and the transition to green economy in Asia. The program has been extended to Central Asia in 2019. To date, 106 grant projects have been approved within the program.
“Kazakhstan has set up ambitious goals in the field (30 percent of renewable energy by 2030 and 50 percent by 2050) and the EU will remain committed to work with Kazakhstan to achieve these targets,” the EU source concluded.
---
Follow the author on twitter: @nargiz_sadikh