On July 11, the National Center for Climate Change under the Ministry of Ecology, Environmental Protection and Climate Change presented the first Uzbekistan’s Green Cities Rating.
It evaluates the country's 14 administrative centers according to the seven highest priority groups of indicators: air quality, water consumption, land use, transport, energy, waste and sanitation. Cities are assessed on a 100-point scale. It takes into account compliance with environmental recommendations, resource consumption by residents and urban environmental management.
Namangan was the best city by 10 indicators, followed by Samarkand and Navoi. The most polluted cities were Nurafshan, Gulistan and Tashkent.
What is the green rating good for?
Large cities in Uzbekistan are experiencing rapid economic and demographic growth. This creates environmental problems such as deteriorating air and water quality, loss of biodiversity and reduced resilience to climate change. Understanding the seriousness of these threats to human health and the environment, it is important to improve the environmental sustainability of cities and strengthen national and local environmental governance. Shifting climate action to the city level is needed to make climate and environmental policies more effective and relevant to local conditions.
Ecological passports of cities and provinces
Environmental passports were created for 14 provincial centers. These passports are compiled on the basis of indicators included in the international methodology of the Green City Index of the Economist Intelligence Unit research project. It helps cities share their experiences in improving environmental sustainability and conduct comparative analyzes at the provincial and global levels.
10 blocks were selected at the first stage: air quality, land use, water consumption, transport, energy, waste and sanitation, CO2 emissions, biodiversity, environmental assessment of buildings and environmental policy. Each block consists of several evaluation indicators. Thus, cities are assessed using more than 30 indicators. The number of blocks may increase over time.
Uzbekistan’s greenest cities
According to the rating, Namangan took first place on 62.29 points. The city has become the most “balanced” in terms of environmental friendliness. In second place with an indicator of 61.13 points is the leader in the number of green spaces per capita - Samarkand. Third place went to Navoi (59.50), where per capita there is the smallest amount of electricity consumed in the country. The top five was closed by Karshi (57.25 points) and Jizzakh (56.03 points). Tashkent (46.44), Gulistan (43.15) and Nurafshan (39.15) were the bottom three.
The rating will be updated annually based on the implementation of approved environmental master plans and improvement of indicators. All data will be entered and displayed on the Green Cities online platform developed by the National Climate Change Centre. On the website, anyone can find out what place their city occupies in the ranking, and familiarize themselves with environmental passports and master plans. In addition, residents and researchers will be able to receive up-to-date and detailed information on measures being taken to improve environmental sustainability in cities across the country.
