Tashkent (TDI): Uzbekistan has signed a $78 million agreement with companies from Saudi Arabia and France to upgrade its hazardous waste management systems and strengthen environmental protection efforts.
The deal brings together Saudi Arabia’s Vision International Investment Company (VIIC) and France’s Suez International. The signing ceremony included Deputy Minister of Ecology Jusipbek Kazbekov, VIIC’s Director of Development Kapil Lalwani, and Paul Bourdillon, Regional Director for Europe and Central Asia at Suez.
The project will unfold in three phases. The first stage involves building new facilities for stabilizing hazardous waste, along with landfills and transfer stations to ensure safe storage and processing.
The second stage will focus on developing engineering designs and piloting technologies to produce Refuse-Derived Fuel (RDF), a practice that converts waste into usable energy. This phase will also test incineration and thermal treatment systems.
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The last phase will involve building a permanent facility that can process large amounts of waste and generate energy from it.
Suez, a French waste management company, has operated in many parts of the world for more than a hundred years. VIIC, based in Saudi Arabia, was founded in 2002 and works on major infrastructure and energy projects across the region. The firm manages assets estimated at around $96 billion.
Uzbekistan’s Ministry of Ecology called the agreement a “milestone” in the country’s environmental policy, with the potential to significantly reduce industrial pollution and support long-term sustainability goals.
Alongside this industrial waste initiative, Uzbekistan is working with the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the European Union on managing hazardous chemicals in agriculture.
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A joint program launched in Tashkent last year targets safer pesticide use and improved waste disposal in farming communities.
Minister of Ecology Aziz Abdukhakimov stressed the public health importance of these efforts. He also pointed to the need for updating the national registry of contaminated zones, especially former agricultural airfields, many of which haven’t been inspected since the 1990s.
Farkhund Yousafzai is an Associate Editor at The Diplomatic Insight.
