Tokayev calls for ecology to be placed above political disagreements

Kazakhstan's President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev spoke at the COP17 leaders' summit on biodiversity conservation. He said healthy ecosystems play a key role in food production, the protection of water resources and the livelihoods of millions of people, and called for an environmental agenda that overcomes political differences.

The president noted that Kazakhstan ranks ninth in the world by territory and stands out for the uniqueness of its biodiversity. He said the new Constitution enshrines a high ecological culture as one of the principles of statehood. He announced that the saiga population rose from 21,000 in 2003 to 4.7 million by this spring, and that about 98 percent of the world's saiga population lives on the Kazakh steppe.

Tokayev also said the snow leopard population grew to about 190 from near extinction in the 1990s, and that the Turan tiger was released into the wild in June for the first time in 70 years. He noted that the Caspian seal population fell from 1 million to 270,000 over the last century and urged international cooperation to protect the Caspian Sea.