Azerbaijan's New Environment Ministry Wins Respect

By Gulnara Mamedzade

BAKU, Azerbaijan, August 20, 2004 (ENS) - Azerbaijan’s environment ministry is winning praise for its efforts to deal with the country’s numerous ecological problems, but its powers are limited.

The country is experiencing huge environmental problems caused by post-Soviet poverty, by its oil industry and by sudden wealth.

Azerbaijan is an oil producing country (Photo credit unknown)

The capital Baku is currently experiencing a big construction boom, with a string of grand restaurant buildings for wedding receptions being put up across the city. However, the owners of these new buildings frequently fail to install proper waste disposal facilities. The same thing is happening with new sanatoria, whose sewage is being discharged into the sea.

Azerbaijan’s Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources was formed in 2001, out of five different state committees. With only a small budget from the treasury, the ministry has relied heavily on international grants, for instance in its successful program to create five new national parks.

Environment Minister Hussein Bagirov said in an interview that his job would be impossible if he was unable to draw on nongovernmental organizations, NGOs, and mobilize the population at large.

Baku, a city of more than two million, is located on the western shore of the Caspian Sea. (Photo credit unknown)

Samir Isayev, head of the environmental NGO Ekolex, said Bagirov’s ministry had the reputation of being one of Azerbaijan’s most open ministries and that it had won respect for its efforts.

"Until recently, there was practically no organization that protected the environment - or else the body that did so was merely a branch office of one in Moscow," said Isayev. "In the Soviet era, ecology was a kind of fifth wheel which no one needed and only got whatever funds were left over. Given all this, the new ministry is coping very well with its mission."

Bagirov said protecting Azerbaijan’s forests – which cover 11 percent of its territory - was a priority and that while illegal felling was still continuing, the loggers were no longer operating so blatantly.

Forests are once again being cared for in Azerbaijan. (Photo courtesy Azerbaijan Ministry of Tourism)

Another priority is provision of clean drinking water for the public. Azerbaijan pledged, along with other countries at the United Nations Johannesburg Summit on Sustainable Development two years ago, to give its citizens clean water by the year 2015. The first stage of the ministry’s plan involves installing water filters in 50 Azerbaijan villages where drinking water is currently of poor quality, and which share one tap between every 20 or 30 houses.

A World Bank funded project is tackling the problem of dangerous and carcinogenic industrial emissions and substances such as mercury and asbestos.

Experts stress that all these daunting problems can only be overcome if there is public support. "Environmental problems will never be solved just by ministerial actions; a new concept of life, thought, culture and public behavior has to evolve," said the minister.

Bagirov’s call for greater involvement by the nongovernmental sector is so far having only modest success. There are around 75 environmental NGOs in Azerbaijan, but only a third of them are active – a small number in a country with so many significant ecological problems.

{Gulnara Mamedzade is editor in chief of "Obozrevatel" newspaper in Baku. This report is published in cooperation with the Institute for War and Peace Reporting.}