Paul Goble
Staunton, April 16 – Astana’s plan to expand the Little Aral Sea, created when the Kokaral Dam was constructed in 2005 and slowed the drying up of what had been part of the larger and dying Aral Sea, Dauletiyar Bayalimov says. Adding to the height of that dam won’t do because there won’t be enough water to fill the Little Aral even to its originally planned level.
The Kazakh member of the International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea says that the plans on offer ignore not only massive evaporation but the likelihood that neither Kyrgyzstan nor Uzbekistan will allow enough water to flow in to improve the situation (spik.kz/2595-malyj-aral-200-milliardov-tenge-na-zavedomo-beznadezhnuju-zateju.html).
Many in Kazakhstan and in the international community see the Little Aral Sea projects as a kind of magical salvation of the problems that have been killing off the Aral Sea as a whole; but such views reflect ignorance or worse and at best ignore the fact that Astana’s plans are nothing more than expensive “hare-brained” schemes.
It would be far better to try to change the flow of water through the Little Aral so that it would become less saline once again and thus support fishing or to invest in improving the irrigation systems in the country. But those are not the kind of projects that many governments seem to prefer. Instead, they want flashy big ones that will fail, but only after their time.
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