Geneva, 1 June 2026 – The World Trade Organization (WTO) headquarters in Geneva hosted a joint panel session of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Czech Republic entitled "Water Across Borders: Trade, Production, and Sustainable Development", organized within the framework of WTO Trade and Environment Week.

The main intervention on behalf of Kazakhstan was delivered by H.E. Mr. Kairat Torebayev, Permanent Representative of the Republic of Kazakhstan to the WTO and International Economic Organizations. The practical dimension of Kazakhstan's experience was presented by Ms. Manira Alagudzhaeva, Vice-President of KAZWATER, who joined the session online from Astana.

Permanent Representative K. Torebayev emphasized that for Central Asia, water has become a matter of economic resilience and competitiveness. Against this background, Kazakhstan views water efficiency not as a separate environmental agenda, but as a cornerstone of a new trade strategy: the country is consistently moving towards a model of high value-added agricultural exports, underpinned by water-saving technologies, the modernization of irrigation, and the digitalization of the water sector.

Turning to the role of the WTO, Permanent Representative K. Torebayev noted that public investments in water conservation and climate-resilient agriculture should be recognized as a contribution to global food security, rather than as a distortion of trade. He further encouraged the international community to take today's climate realities into account when shaping the future of global trade.

Vice-President M. Alagudzhaeva presented the technological contour of Kazakhstan's solutions – digital water accounting, satellite-based monitoring, digital twins of water management systems, and traceability mechanisms for agri-food products. As a concrete next step, she put forward the initiative of establishing a regional digital platform for water resources monitoring in Central Asia.

The joint organization of the session by Kazakhstan and the Czech Republic underlined that the two states, located in different parts of the world, share common approaches to the management of transboundary water resources and their linkages with international trade.

Source : https://www.gov.kz/memleket/entities/mfa-wto/press/news/details/1233074?lang=ru