Azerbaijan’s Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources of Azerbaijan Mukhtar Babayev has urged the international community to put pressure on Armenia over deliberate pollution of Azerbaijani rivers.
Babayev made the remarks on June 30 at the presentation of Karabakha Center online platform.
Armenia has polluted the transboundary rivers of Azerbaijan and also seriously damaged the forest fund during the three decades of the Azerbaijani lands.
Reminding that around 40 percent of the mineral water resources of Azerbaijan fall on the liberated lands, Babayev said that the ministry will conduct monitoring for the rational use of water in these territories.
Moreover, Armenia has plundered natural resources in and around Nagorno-Karabakh, which led to the violation of the ecological balance in the region, the minister said.
Azerbaijan’s Energy Ministry has also raised concerns over the pollution of Okhchucay River on the border with Armenia’s Syunik (Zangazur) region. The river is being polluted with wastes from the Zangazur copper-molybdenum plant, the main shareholder of which is Germany’s Kronimet Mining company.
The river, most of which is located in Syunik, flows through Azerbaijan’s liberated Zangilan into the Araz River.
The Okhchuchay is constantly polluted in Armenia by wastes from the Gafan and Gadjaran mining industries, playing the role of a collector of industrial waste.
Azerbaijan in June launched a criminal case against Armenia over Yerevan’s ecological terror during the 30-year occupation of the country’s Karabakh region and adjacent seven districts.
It should be noted that around 70 percent of Azerbaijan’s groundwater resources are formed in neighboring countries due to the transboundary water flows.
