Second Meeting of the Regional Committee for the UNESCO World Heritage Site “Cold Winter Deserts of Turan” in Ashgabat

The meeting was attended by representatives from Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The event was organized by the Michael Succow Foundation, Conservation X Labs, and the Ministry of Environmental Protection of Turkmenistan as part of the One Health for Nature Conservation in Central Asia project.

At the start of the meeting, representatives of the States Parties presented status reports on the condition of the national components of the transnational World Heritage site. Based on this, regional tasks were discussed – joint strategies to mitigate threats to the World Heritage site, the development of a transnational management concept for the World Heritage site, and the preparation of the next joint state of conservation report to the World Heritage Center. 

In addition, joint rules of procedure for the Regional Committee were adopted, defining the tasks, composition, and decision-making mechanisms of the body. The Succow Foundation provided information on current and planned project activities in the protected areas of the World Heritage site, and on the results of its assessments of the management effectiveness of the Bereketli Garagum and Repetek protected areas, which it had carried out in two workshops prior to the meeting using the IUCN's IBEX tool.

On the second day of the meeting, participants visited the information and visitor center of the Bereketli Garagum protected area, which was established and equipped in 2022 as part of the MSF's Central Asian Desert Initiative (CADI).

The serial, transnational site Cold Winter Deserts of Turan was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2023. It comprises 14 components in seven protected areas in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Hereby over 3 million hectares of Central Asia's largest ecosystem were placed under the protection of the World Heritage Convention. 

Die Michael Succow Stiftung hat den gemeinsamen Nominierungsprozess der drei Länder über viele Jahre hinweg im Rahmen der Central Asian Desert Initiative (CADI) koordiniert und fachlich unterstützt.

The Succow Foundation coordinated and provided technical support for the joint nomination process of the three countries for many years as part of the Central Asian Desert Initiative (CADI).

Photos: Islam Annamamedov