KG - DISASTER HAZARD MSP

The Kyrgyz Republic is a country prone to significant landslides, floods, earthquakes and other natural and manmade disaster hazards causing human death and much infrastructure damage every year. A particularly dangerous location is Mailuu-Suu, near the Uzbekistan border upstream of the densely populated and highly productive Ferghana Valley. In Mailuu Suu 23 uranium tailings and 13 rock waste dumps, developed during Soviet times, are under constant threat from major landslides that could push tailings into the Mailuu-Suu river (a tributary to the Syr Darya river), and cause regional environmental disaster. The environmental objective of the project is to to incorporate natural resource and environmental management practices into effective disaster management strategies, with particular attention of protecting the integrity of the Mailuu-Suu ecosystem by addressing transboundary contamination of the Mailuu-Suu river and land degradation in the surrounding areas. In particular, the project will aim at keeping the transboundary pollution loads within the applicable standards, ensuring sustainable natural resources management to reduce the risk of landslides, and strengthening regional cooperation among neighboring countries to mitigate natural hazard risks. Through its co-financing with IDA, the project will also incorporate natural resources and environmental management into effective disaster management strategies for the Kyrgyz Republic. This will be achieved by: (i) preventing leaching of waste dumps into the Mailuu-Suu River; (ii) strengthening the monitoring and dissemination systems related to water and soil quality; (iii) mainstreaming natural resource management into effective disaster mitigation strategies; and (iv) promoting transboundary cooperation on water quality by supporting a forum for stakeholders to discus concerns and knowledge sharing. It is expected that the fragile ecosystem that has been damaged by a legacy of environmentally unsustainable development of uranium mining and human activities of land degradation will revamp.