Over the past month or so, there’s been a fair amount of good news regarding enviornmental projects in Kazakhstan. The government introduced an Ecological Code recently, to codify and integrate laws regarding environmental protection and bring them up to world standard. However, in Kazakhstan as in many other countries, there is pressure to ensure that environmental laws do not interfere with economic growth. One version of the Code reportedly included predicitons of 14% GDP growth rate! Not clear that that is possible or that GDP growth is the jurisditiction of the Ministry of the Environment, but they may just be doing what they think they need to do to survive without being seen as obstructionist or useless.
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