All countries have moral and legal obligations to protect the environment for the present and future generations, said Sahiba Gafarova, Speaker of Azerbaijan’s Milli Majlis, News.Az reports.

Speaker Gafarova was speaking at a high-level meeting of the UN General Assembly themed “The Role of Zero Waste as a Transformative Solution in Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.” The meeting was dedicated to the UN resolution based on the ‘Zero Waste’ Initiative of Türkiye’s First Lady Emine Erdogan.

The speaker stated that almost 30 years of the Armenian occupation of 20% of the internationally recognized territory of Azerbaijan was accompanied by environmental terror.

According to Gafarova, Armenia had destroyed forests and nature preserves, the natural resources, and polluted the soil and the rivers – including those trans-border rivers that flow from Armenia to Azerbaijan.

“Azerbaijan began restoration and revival of lands on a large scale after liberating them from the Armenian occupation in 2020. Towns and villages are being built in keeping with the ‘smart town and village’, ‘green energy’, ‘zero emissions’ and ‘zero waste’ concepts in Karabakh and East Zangazur. The village of Aghali to which the former internally displaced persons have returned already is the first successful outcome of this approach,” the speaker added.

News.Az