Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 24 – Ecologists
say that Beijing’s plans to develop Xinjiang will have “apocalyptic”
consequences for Kazakhstan, making Lake Balkash into a second Aral Sea, drying
up the Irtysh River, and leaving the residents of Ust-Kamenogorsk, Pavlodar,
Karaganda, and Semeya (the former Semipalatinsk) without drinking water.
According to a report by Petr Bologov
on the Lenta.ru news agency today, China cannot hope to develop its far west
without water and thus has decided without any apologies to take it from the
Ili and Irtysh, two rivers “on which those living in Central and Eastern
Kazakhstan directly depend” (www.lenta.ru/articles/2013/01/23/irtysh/).
Both these rivers
rise in China: the Irtysh on the border with Mongolia and the Ili in the
Tyan-Shan mountains. They then flow into Kazakhstan where the Ili provides
water to Lake Balkhash and the sixth of the Kazakhstan population living along
its length and the Irtysh drinking water to some four million additional
Kazakhs.
Kazakhstan
and China have been discussing these two trans-border rivers since 1998, but
Astana was able to raise the level of the talks beyond the expert level only in
2009 and only two years ago announced that they would conclude a water-sharing
agreement for these rivers by 2014.
China
wants to retain more of the water from these rivers in order to supply a
Xinjiang population which Beijing projects will grow from 20 million now to 100
million in 2030, a population whose needs for water will more than double,
Bologov says, noting that China has already been taking increasing amount of
water from these two rivers.
According
to hydrologists in Kazakhstan, if China takes even ten percent more than it is
doing now, that will “inevitably lead to a situation in which Lake Balkash will
split into two parts and thus follow the path of the Aral Sea with one of the
parts drying out completely” and the lake thus disappearing.
Beijing
has turned down Astana’s proposals to avoid that outcome, and Kazakhstan
authorities are now worried that “the Irtysh will suffer even more from the
intensive [Chinese] development of Xinjiang.”
That river’s flow now amounts to five cubic kilometers a year, of which
China is already taking1.8 cubic kilometers.
Officials in the portions of Kazakhstan most likely
to be affected are pressing for the construction of new reservoirs in order to
guarantee that there will be enough drinking water for their populations (www.caravan.kz/article/36324), but they concede
that even with those in place declines in the flow will affect agriculture and
industrial production there.
China has
refused to sign the Helsinki Convention on the Preservation and Use of
Trans-Border Water Flows and International Lakes, although Beijing has said
that it is prepared to negotiate about such flows with its neighbors. But that
leaves neighbors like Kazakhstan in a less than advantageous position.
“The reduction of the size of
trans-border flows of the Ili and Irtysh rivers is fraught with negative
consequences for the unique lakes of Balkhan and Zaysan and the disappearance
of the forests of the Ili Alataury, Dzhugarsky Alatau and Tarbagatay national
part, Kazakhstan ecologist Bakytzhan Bazarbek said this week (http://megapolis.kz/art/Kranti).
He added that “if
the Balkhash repeats the fate of the Aral, then from the bottom of the dried
out body of water will rise thousands of tons of salt which will cover the
entire eastern portion of the country,” leading as the disappearance of the
Aral Sea has to environmental and health disasters across the land.
Bazarbek says that Astana has no
choice but to find “a common language” with China, but so far, last week’s bilateral
talks concluded only with a promise that the discussions will continue (www.minagri.kz/ru/small/news/v-astanie-sostoialos-10-oie-zasiedaniie-kazachstansko-kitajskoj-sovmiestnoj-komissii-po-ispolzovaniiu-i-ochranie-transgranitchnych-riek/3228/).
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