Uzbekistan hosted some 10,000 attendees from more than 100 countries at Eco Expo Central Asia 2026 in Samarkand this week, held alongside the Global Environment Facility’s (GEF) Eighth Assembly to mark World Environment Day on June 5, according to the organisers in a release sent by ET partner Maximum Exposure.
The expo, the second after last year’s inaugural edition in Tashkent, featured around 70 pavilions, 20 startup platforms and some 50 side events, and drew high-level ministers and diplomats. It was opened by Aziz Abdukhakimov, advisor to the president and chairman of the National Committee on Ecology and Climate Change, alongside UN Environment Programme executive director Inger Andersen and IUCN director general Grethel Aguilar.
The concurrent GEF Assembly, the body’s highest governing forum, meets every four years and gathers ministers, international organisations and civil society from 186 countries. It approved $77.6mn in green financing, including a restoration project in the Chu and Talas river basins shared by Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, and a risk mitigation facility to draw private investment into renewable energy in Uzbekistan.
For the travel trade, the most significant outcome was in Karakalpakstan. The UNDP signed a cooperation agreement directly with the Ecology Committee of the Republic of Karakalpakstan, its first formal partnership with the autonomous republic rather than national institutions. The deal supports ecosystem restoration, biodiversity conservation and sustainable water management in the Aral Sea region, sitting within the wider Lower Amu Darya Water Resources Management Concept.
The agreement matters for tourism because it underpins the conservation product Karakalpakstan is building around the Lower Amudarya State Biosphere Reserve and its tugai forests, an offer the region is positioning against the disaster tourism long associated with the dried Aral Sea.
President Shavkat Mirziyoyev used his opening speech to announce the Ulugh Beg Centre for Sustainable Technology and Applied Research, an initiative of Tashkent’s Green University under direct presidential administration. The centre will cover renewable energy, water, critical minerals and artificial intelligence, and will also serve as Uzbekistan’s centre for the protection of dark skies and the nocturnal environment, named for the 15th-century astronomer and ruler Ulugh Beg.
The dark-skies remit is a notable signal for nature and astro-tourism in a country with extensive desert and mountain terrain.
Green University separately launched what it described as the world’s first academic course in biodiversity finance, developed with the UNDP’s BIOFIN initiative, as Uzbekistan seeks to close a $60mn biodiversity finance gap. Japan and Uzbekistan also held a joint Blue and Green Nexus session, advancing their scientific cooperation in the Aral Sea region.
Read the full press release.
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About the National Committee on Ecology and Climate Change of the Republic of Uzbekistan
The National Committee on Ecology and Climate Change is a government organisation of the Republic of Uzbekistan that oversees national policy on the use of natural resources and on ecosystem conservation and restoration. It directs state policy on environmental protection, natural resource management and climate change, reporting directly to the President and operating independently of other ministries and local executive authorities. The committee was created in November 2025 by a presidential decree signed by President Shavkat Mirziyoyev to replace the former Ministry of Ecology, Environmental Protection and Climate Change.
About Maximum Exposure Ltd.
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