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Dear President, Dear Prime Minister, Dear Aral Fishermen, Ladies and Gentlemen.

Thank you for giving me this opportunity to talk to you today. We have followed the fishery in this region since 1991 and standing here today gives me great pleasure. Lots of things have happened over these years and I will highlight some mile stones on the way from 1991 to 2008. But when I look back to day there is only one word that covers the overall change – it’s a miracle. In 1991 we came to a dead sea; in 2008 Aral Sea is a living sea. 

In 1996 our organisation Living Sea started its concrete work to help and assist in the developing of the fishery on the Northern Aral Sea. The first real fishery on the Aral Sea in many years was established and we documented that the Aral Sea was alive.

In 1999 the first general assembly in NGO Aral Tenizi was held with more than 600 participants.

In 2003 Kazakhstan and the World Bank signed the SYNAS project, and in Aralsk we established the fish processing centre Kambala Balyk.

Beside this a lot of important things happened along the way: marketing of fish of high quality; the strong support from the fishermen; from the Kazakh authorities in Astana, Kyzylorda and Aralsk; great support from international agencies and foundations like DANIDA, the World Bank, Mashav, USAID, UNDP and many more. All this together gives us all a fundament that makes it possible to look forward with confidence.

To day the Northern Aral Sea is nearly restored; fish processing plants are shooting up in Aralsk and Kazalinsk; JSDF will continue to build up capacity in the Aral fishery and we thank Kazakhstan and the World Bank for signing the 2. Phase of the SYNAS project with the aim to the total re-establishing of NAS and the water will come back to the harbour of Aralsk.

Now our Danish financial support to the Aral Sea has come to its end. It’s sad on the one hand but we know that our partner NGO Aral Tenizi together with support from JSDF can and will take over all the responsibilities in the coming years.

We have contributed to the developing of fishery in this region, but we have also got a lot back from the fishermen and the people here, first of all friendship. Therefore we will end this presentation with singing a song about Aral Sea, our common hope for a glorious future for Aral Sea and its people.

Thank you