The region’s main river flows through Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan and eventually empties into the languishing Aral Sea. Its flow is constantly decreasing due to climate change, but also due to intensive exploitation for agricultural purposes, aggravated by competition between different countries. But, according to experts, with bottom-up initiatives it would still be possible to pull it out of its decline.
Astana () – Central Asia’s ecosystem largely depends on the region’s main river, the Syrdarja, which flows into the languishing Aral Sea. The director of the EcoMind Center for Ecological Decisions, Arman Utenov, believes that despite everything the system can be saved if the river is freed from all unnecessary hydrotechnical structures, which he compares to thrombi in the veins of a living organism. In an interview with Azattyk, he explains why it is urgent to save the water resources of Kazakhstan and the entire region.
In fact, the Syrdarja River crosses four countries, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, and at the end of its course empties into the Aral Sea. Many people of popular extraction live on its banks, fishermen, merchants, farmers, but for some time experts have been consulting to solve the obvious problems of the most important hydrographic basin in all of Central Asia. The level of the northern part of the Aral depends on its waters, and in recent years the flow has continued to decrease. Utenov explains that “currently, the Syrdarja is unable to fulfill its natural functions,” being blocked by bridges and various types of equipment that serve the agricultural needs of various areas.
Only in the territory of the Kazakh region of Kyzylorda there are 90 thousand hectares of rice cultivation, the area of which is growing year after year. The natural flow in the territory of Kazakhstan is conditioned along the entire course of the river by a regime of intense exploitation, especially around the Šardara reservoir, in the Turkestan region, on the border with Uzbekistan. Further down are the Koksaraj hydroregulator and the Aklak aqueduct, all the way to the Aral Sea, constructions that are too limited in height that do not allow the waters to flow back properly and reestablish the natural regime of the river course.
Another problem that must be resolved is the sectoral subdivision and competition between countries that have access to rainwater, so that, although the main basin is in the territory of Kazakhstan, it is necessary to coordinate the use of the resource between the different countries. This mainly affects the use of water in agriculture, for which around 70% of the water is discharged, half of which is actually lost due to inefficient infrastructure. “We must update the ecosystem,” insists Utenov, “water is not only for the economy, it is for life, and its scarcity can be devastating for everything.” The effects intersect with climate change, which interrupts the water cycle and causes the soil to lose its ability to absorb it, in addition to destroying biodiversity.
Water is “a natural filter that solves all problems,” recalls the expert, and the restoration of the hydrogeological regime of the surface must be carried out by remodeling the natural processes of the area, as is already happening in other Asian regions and even in Russia. , for example in Chuvashia, where they have managed to create a hundred artificial ponds to regulate the surrounding waters, doubling the yield of agricultural crops and even recovering deer. The ecosystem “enormously influences the quality of life,” explains Utenov, and attracts the population towards the good use of natural resources.
Experts advocate grassroots initiatives, in “basin councils”, instead of depending on the guidelines of government centers far from the affected areas, while they are now limited to bureaucratic control functions. The risk is that water conditions worsen to the point of provoking conflicts between the inhabitants of the area and, eventually, between the Central Asian States themselves, giving rise in a few years to “water wars”, such as the one expected with Afghanistan. which is digging a large canal to exploit the resources of the Amur Darya, the other great river of Central Asia, forcing Uzbekistan to pour into the waters of the Syrdarja.
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