"Desertation." Reconstruction of the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan...KOICA Shares Bond Issue Performance

The Korea International Cooperation Agency and KOICA announced on the 27th of last month that they held a 'Sustainable Financial Activity Sharing Meeting to Expand the Green Impact of Uzbekistan' in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

The event was organized to share KOICA's experience in issuing 1.4 trillion won worth of international bonds to respond to the climate crisis in Uzbekistan with the Global Green Growth Institute.

KOICA supported the entire process for Uzbek commercial bank Sanowat Kurilish Bank and agribusiness bank Agro Bank to issue bonds and list them on the London Stock Exchange, respectively.

Bank of Sanowat Kurilish issued $575 million worth of sustainable bonds in July, with more than 5% of them allocated to KOICA's Aral Sea crisis response project, which will be used to fund agriculture.

The Aral Sea, between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, is the world's fourth-largest inland sea and has been turned into an uninhabitable one, with a 90% drop in water volume due to climate change, large-scale reclamation projects and reckless use of agricultural water.