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A major challenge facing the Republic of Buryatia, subject of the Russian Federation, is how to balance the task of protecting Lake Baikal – a unique water object and ecological system included in the UNESCO list of World Natural Heritage Areas – with the need for dynamic and sustainable socio-economic development of the republic.  This requires streamlining and improving water policy jointly with economic, administrative, information and other policy instruments. The recommendations in this report aim to help achieve this objective. They include the introduction of abstraction charges for irrigation water as a  natural resource; enhancement of state support to the water sector; and improvement of economic instruments for managing risks of water-related hazards (such as compulsory insurance and differentiated land tax rates in flood prone areas). A few innovative instruments are also recommended for pilot testing such as establishing limits for discharges of certain hazardous substances in a pilot area (e.g. Selenga river basin) and progressive development of market for tradable quotas for discharges of the “capped” pollutants; and introducing a charge (tax) on toxic agricultural chemicals (pesticides, herbicides, etc.) and synthetic detergents so that to create incentives for the reduction of diffuse water pollution.

This report presents recommendations on the reform of economic instruments for water resources management in Kyrgyzstan, specifically on tariffs for urban water supply and sanitation (WSS) and irrigation water, pollution charges, surface water abstraction charges for enterprises (consumptive and non-consumptive uses), specific land tax rates for the Issyk-Kul biosphere reserve, as well as taxes and customs duty on products contributing to water pollution. For each instrument, alternative reform options are identified and assessed, and preferred options put forward, with an action plan.

This report assesses the Republic of Kazakhstan’s significant efforts to improve water supply and sanitation (WSS) services over the past 15 years, notably in terms of ambitious target-setting, implementation of a sound water tariff policy, and significant investment in the rehabilitation and development of relevant infrastructure. Generally speaking, the absence of updated data on WSS institutional development is a limiting factor for further policy and programme development in the field, including in Kazakhstan. The monitoring and evaluation system proposed in this report aims to help assess progress in the WSS sector and serve as a basis for any necessary corrective measures.

This report presents an overview of existing environmental credit lines in the EU’s Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine), which are mostly supported by International Finance Institutions and donors and disbursed by local commercial banks. Lessons learned from this type of credit-line implementation provide useful insights for spurring the banking sector into financing green investments.

The European Union’s Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine) struggle with environmental challenges related to the consumption and end-of-life management of many harmful products. This policy manual considers the potential use and implementation of four categories of product-related economic instruments to address some of these challenges: product taxes, tax differentiation based on environmental factors, deposit-refund systems and extended producer responsibility (EPR).