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Building a Resilient Future: Third Subregional Cryosphere Workshop Held in Samarkand
A third subregional workshop on the development of national and subregional action programmes took place on 2-3 April 2025 in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, in the framework of the GEF-UNDP-UNESCO “Strengthening the Resilience of Central Asian Countries by Enabling Regional Cooperation to Assess Glacio-Nival Systems to Develop Integrated Methods for Sustainable Development and Adaptation to Climate Change” project. The event was organized by the UNESCO Regional Office in Almaty and conducted within the “International Waters” methodology of the Global Environmental Facility (GEF).
The workshop built upon work initiated in 2024 during previous national and subregional workshops, where the foundation was laid for the development of the Transboundary Diagnostic Analysis (TDA) on the cryosphere in Central Asia.
The event brought together representatives of environment and water resources ministries and agencies from Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, along with international and national cryosphere experts, data management specialists, and NGO representatives. The main objective of the workshop was to move from analysis to action: using the findings of the TDA and scenario modelling, participants laid the groundwork for the development of National and Subregional Action Programmes (NAP and SAP) to support adaptation to changes in the cryosphere.
The SAP is a negotiated policy document to be endorsed at the highest level across all relevant sectors of government. It establishes clear priorities for action, whether policy, legal, or institutional reforms, or investment, for addressing the priority transboundary issues identified through the TDA.
During the workshop, key findings and recommendations from the cryosphere TDA were presented. Participants also discussed mechanisms for implementing future action programmes based on agreed regional priorities, reviewing examples of successful strategies from related fields. A significant part of the discussions focused on developing a shared vision of the cryosphere in 2050, as well as defining concrete goals and next steps.
These discussions will inform the continued development of national and subregional action programmes aimed at enhancing the resilience of Central Asian countries to the impacts of climate change on the cryosphere, through strengthened in-country and regional cooperation.
