Overview of Dushanbe's state of the environment

The city's environmental properties and local environmental problems are generally stipulated by natural and climatic conditions and caused by human pressures from industry, transport and city's economy, depending on their scale, location and capacities.

Now, the state of the urban environment is good enough. However, the reason for this is not the introduction of new technologies or enhancement of environmental control, but the general decline in city's industry, associated with political and economic crisis. On another hand, a lot of activities of city administration and local environmental authorities to restore and enhance urban environment are also important and comprehensive.

Financing of previously adopted environmental programmes is postponed. Nature protection activity is mainly aimed at environmental control and frequently this is not enough to protect the urban environment from human pressures and harmful pollutions.

Source : State statistics

Formerly, air quality values in Dushanbe were one of the worst among other industrial cities. Although the decrease in production volume in a number of industries leads to the reduction of emissions into the atmosphere, the quality of purification of harmful gaseous emissions also goes down. Air pollution from vehicles is rising. Due to out-of-date wastewater purification equipment and old technologies pollution of water resources is continuing. The state of the soils and land resources, watercourses and green plantations is falling. Newly introduced green plantations are monotonous and unpromising.

Overpopulation of the city,because of arriving of villagers, leads to the illegal waste disposal and formation of garbage within irrigation ditches and building sites. Quite often, dirty waters from heavy rainfall and households are directly discharged into surface watercourses. Water quality and state of the water resources is the issue of concern of townspeople. Stirring up private trade and lack of the sanitary inspections leads to the high risk of pesthole formation.

The city administration has recently achieved some positive results in the field of environmental protection and conservation. Illegal tree cutting is virtually stopped; all city parks, squares and green areas are under care; many architectural monuments and historical buildings are resorted; practically all unendorsed waste disposal sites are eliminated; regular environmental inspections to check air pollution from vehicles, as well as the condition of water supply and sewerage systems are being undertaken.

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