DUSHANBE, June 8, Asia-Plus - The activities of the Bellerive Foundation are being integrated into the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) in the form of the “Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan Fund for the Environment”, a US$ 10 million fund which will be dedicated to practical solutions to environmental problems, according to information from the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) Country Office in Tajikistan.

According to the source, the new Fund will concentrate its activities in six main areas: environmental education; natural resource management in fragile zones; nature parks and wildlife reserves; environmentally and culturally appropriate tourism infrastructure; environmental health; and research.

Special focus areas include water resource management in areas of desertification and measures to reduce the vulnerability of poor populations to natural disasters. The Fund will also work to alleviate the poverty that forces people to consume the few resources available to them -- a cycle that often results in deeper poverty, depleted soils, deforestation, desertification, pollution, water scarcity, disease and hunger.  Bellerive activities, such as tree conservation and the design of fuel-saving cooking systems, will reinforce AKF’s existing programs.

ABOUT: The Bellerive Foundation was founded by the late Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan in Switzerland in 1977. Its major programs focused on the link between the scarcity of natural resources and poverty in the developing world; the preservation of fragile mountain ecosystems; animal protection; and initiatives in environmental education.

The late Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, paternal uncle of His Highness the Aga Khan, was the second son of Sir Sultan Mohamed Shah Aga Khan, who was the 48th Imam of the Ismaili Muslims and President of the League of Nations from 1937 to 1939.  Prince Sadruddin founded and chaired the Bellerive Foundation along with his wife, Princess Catherine.  Prince Sadruddin served the international community in a variety of roles, including the United Nations’ High Commissioner for Refugees (1965-77) and the United Nations’ Coordinator for Assistance to Afghanistan (1988-90). He was also the United Nations’ Executive Delegate of the Secretary General for a humanitarian program for Iraq , Kuwait , and the Iraq-Iran and Iraq-Turkey border areas (1990).