Kazakhstan No.1 in Central Asia and in world's Top 10 by greenhouse gas emissions

Greenhouse gas emissions have brought Kazakhstan into the 1st place among Central Asian countries, Irina Yesserkepova, Deputy Director Zhasyl Damu -- an arm of the Ministry of Environment Protection of Kazakhstan working on preservation and restoration of the environment -- told Tengrinews.

According to her, studies and monitorings have been held over the past decade by participating countries of the international agreement on climate change. According to the collected data, Kazakhstan is in the 1st place by the rate of greenhouse gas emissions in Central Asia and is amount the world's Top 10 countries.

During the round table discussion of Air Emissions of Industrial Enterprises, held in Almaty, the expert said that emission of greenhouse gases total reached 247 million tons in 2013 in Kazakhstan. Meanwhile, speaking about the general ecological situation in the country, Yesserkepova pointed out that the Ministry had a plan to keep the emissions of the pollutants by industrial companies within 5 million tons by the year of 2020 in Kazakhstan. Currently Kazakhstan's emission of polluting agents equals to 7 million tons per year.

According to the head of the laboratory of the Scientific and Technical Institute for Air Protection in Russia Nikolai Burenin there have been positive developments in the work on improvement of the ecology situation in Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan is the most progressive country in the Custom's Union in terns of legal framework and regulative documents in the field of protection and restoration of the environment.

Greenhouse gas emissions in Kazakhstan as well as emission of other pollutants remain an important issue for scientific and technical institutes, design contractors, NGOs and independent experts.

Burenin added that Kazakhstan had to figure out which advanced environmental protection technologies it had to introduce to improve the situation. "Enterprises should evaluate their level of environmental friendliness. Besides, they should not forget about the financial aspect to make sure that the technologies they introduce are feasible for their enterprise," the expert recommended.

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