China Taking Ever More Water from the Ili and Threatening Survival of Kazakhstan’s Lake Balkhash. Kazakh and International Experts Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 29 – The Ili River which rises in China provides 80 percent of the inflow of water into Kazakhstan’s Lake Balkhash. China is taking ever more water from its portion of the river, reducing flows into Kazakhstan, and raising the prospect that Lake Balkhash will suffer the same fate as the Aral Sea, Kunduz Adylbekova says.

            China is taking ever more water out of the Ili to support the rapidly growing population in Xinjiang, to help accelerate the development of its one path, one road program, and to support mining operations in the Western part of the country, the journalist says (cabar.asia/ru/aral-nomer-dva-chto-stoit-za-obmeleniem-krupnejshego-ozera-balhash-v-kazahstane).

            Kazakhstan has sought to get Beijing to agree to limit withdrawals of water, but China has been unwilling to do so. And because China is not a signatory to either of the two international agreements that govern the use of water from trans-border rivers, most experts say there is little or no chance that China will agree.

            As a result, Kazakhstan is seeking to reduce its own use of water both for agriculture and industry so that the lake will not disappear with all the health and epidemiological consequences that the drying up of the Aral Sea has manifested. But there seems little prospect that it will be able to compensate for the declines in water flow from China.

            The situation is being exacerbated by global warming and the current drought that has hit Central Asia. And it is virtually certain that the consequences of the drying up of Lake Balkhash will make it far more difficult for Kazakhstan to cooperate with China and far more likely that Nur Sultan will seek to promote river diversion from Russia’s Siberia.

            At the very least, the Kazakhstan authorities are likely to conclude that water shortages in their own country make it impossible for them to share more water with Uzbekistan and Karakalpakstan, further undermining the environmental and epidemiological situations in those two republics.