Faculty of Geography and Environmental Sciences Follows the President's State of the Nation Address

On 28 October 2026, the leadership of the Faculty of Geography and Environmental Sciences of Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, heads of departments and teaching staff watched the live broadcast of the State of the Nation Address by President of the Republic of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, "Current Tasks of Kazakhstan in a New Historical Cycle". The President delivered the Address at a session of the Kurultai.

This year's Address was delivered in the year of the 35th anniversary of Independence and shortly after the new Constitution entered into force on 1 July 2026. The President outlined the key tasks of the country's new historical stage, addressing public administration reform, economic growth, social policy and infrastructure modernisation. In particular, under the Khalyqtyq Qurylys programme, about KZT 6.5 trillion from the National Fund is to be allocated to infrastructure projects by the end of 2029, and 2027 has been declared the Year of Large-Scale Construction.

The Address set out the country's development priorities. The following provisions are of particular relevance to the Faculty's research and teaching:

• a systematic response to water scarcity, rational water use, reduction of network losses and completion of the National Water Resources Information System;
• introduction of water-saving technologies and artificial intelligence in agriculture;
• development of digital twins of urban infrastructure and of national supercomputing capacity;
• modernisation of geological exploration based on advanced technologies;
• provision of clean drinking water to settlements under the Khalyqtyq Qurylys (People's Construction) programme.

These areas are directly linked to the research of the Faculty's departments and its Scientific Center for Sustainable Development and Rational Use of Natural Resources: hydrology and water quality, climate change, geoinformation technologies and Earth remote sensing, and environmental monitoring. Earlier, on 21 October 2026, KazNU and the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation of Kazakhstan signed a memorandum of cooperation and an agreement on joint scientific and expert research.

The Faculty trains hydrologists, ecologists and cartographers at bachelor's, master's and doctoral levels. Researchers and doctoral students of the Department of Meteorology and Hydrology have carried out a comprehensive study of the Talas River basin and are investigating water quality in the Irtysh River and the impact of climate change on evaporation in the Ile-Balkhash basin. International cooperation is also growing: in 2026 the Faculty co-hosted a summer school on satellite monitoring of water resources with INRAE (France), its staff took part in the 8th Aral Summer School, and a new project on transboundary river basins and glaciers is being prepared within the joint remote sensing laboratory with the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The key provisions of the Address will be discussed at the departments and taken into account in planning the Faculty's research, teaching and student engagement activities.