UNGA High-Level Side Event on Melting Glaciers

On September 23, 2022 the Republic of Tajikistan in cooperation with the Kingdom of Netherlands, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Canada, the Dominican Republic, Switzerland, the Argentine Republic, and the United Republic of Tanzania, as well as UNICEF, UNESCO, UNDESA, the World Meteorological Organization and UN-Water on the margins of United Nations General Assembly organized a High-Level side event on the sidelines of UNGA High-Level Week entitled "The Melting Cryosphere: Threats to Groundwater Buffering of Streamflow and the Sustainability of Water Resource Management including in SIDS". This special event was put together in order to emphasize the importance of scientific cooperation and connecting scientific research, policy development and action and to raise awareness of the impact of climate change on glaciers and water. This event contained two panels: High-Level panel at the ministerial level and Expert session with the scanties as a panelist from each part of the world.

This special event was opened by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Tajikistan Mr. Sirojiddin Muhriddin, who in his speech highlighted the impact of the climate change caused by melting glaciers and the importance of this critical issue for the world community. In this regards, Mr.Sirojiddin Muhriddin noted the timely initiative championed by His Excellency Emomali Rahmon, the President of the Republic of Tajikistan to declare 2025 as the International Year of Glacier Preservation and called the Member States to support and implement this initiative. To bring this proposal to life, Tajikistan and its partner countries are planning to table a draft resolution titled "International Year of Glaciers Preservation 2025" in the second Committee of the UN General Assembly this year.

Furthermore, this event followed by the statements of the Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation of the Kingdom of Netherlands, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Uzbekistan, Head of the Division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the Deputy Minister of Foreign Policy for the Dominican Republic, the Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Argentine Republic, the State Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Finland, the Assistant Director-General for the Natural Sciences UNESCO, the Assistant-Secretary-General UN DESA, the Vice-Chair of UN-Water and Dr. Nisreen El-Hashemite of the Royal Academy of Sciences International Trust.

The participants of the event, including high-level representatives from the Member States, UN Agencies and other interested parties welcomed the proposal of the Republic of Tajikistan to declare 2025 as an International Year for Glaciers Preservation and expressed their readiness to work with Tajikistan and other stakeholders to implement this initiative.

The High-Level event was attended by representatives of over 90 UN Member States and was virtually attended by stakeholders and partners around the world.