The project is so devastating that even in a state where openly opposing the government can be dangerous and demonstrations of dissent are rare, the public is showing overt opposition, so that the affair of the Ile-Alatau National Park has become the first environmental conflict in Central Asia to be included in the atlas of environmental justice Ejolt.
The ski resort of Kok-Zhailau should arise in the heart of the Ile-Alatau National Park, placed by UNESCO designated sites to become a World Heritage Site, just 10 km from Almaty, the largest city in Kazakhstan (Astana is the capital, an empty futuristic monument to the regime) and to allow for this, the government and President Nursultan Nazarbayev decreed that the part of the plan for the construction of 100 km of slopes, construction of ski lifts, hotels, restaurants, supermarkets, shops, clubs, golf courses, highways, parking lots, mains electricity and gas, water supply facilities is all at the expense of the state budget as the infrastructure needed to build a gigantic real estate transaction.
According to the feasibility report, the cost of the project is approximately $ 20 million and $ 750 million for infrastructure planning, and public money will be used for the construction of the resort. The state is also trying to attract $ 2.1 billion in private investment and opponents of the project say that this will increase the already high corruption in Kazakhstan and note that the sum is considerably higher than similar projects in developed countries and that also this will lead to cuts in already low social spending in the country. (…)
Meanwhile, something moves: the Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee has accepted a petition of citizens of Almaty on the project "Kok-Zhailau" and thus violations committed at an early stage of the project of the ski resort will be reviewed at an international level.
