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Opinion 73
agriculture in the examined period, though there could be an acceleration in the future.
“Agricultural development remains a priority area in the current Five Year Plan of the Chinese government, and land use change studies indicate continued conversion of scrub and grassland into irrigated agricultural fields,” the study noted.
“Above all, the results underline the potential influence
of changes in upstream water use on downstream water availability for different water users, intensifying existing trade-offs," it added, referring to, of course, the impact of China's water use on the availability of water in Kazakhstan.
The fate of the lake and the waters flowing into it is made even more ambiguous by gaps in data as a result of the challenging political situation in Xinjiang, agricultural modernisation
“The protesters seriously doubt that the economic benefits of China’s investments in Kazakhstan will have a long-term advantage for the Central Asian nation”
throughout North-West China and rapid changes under the policy agenda of the Chinese infrastructure development Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the study said. China’s hegemony, reinforced by the BRI, drives rapid changes in cultivation practices and water regimes, the study observed.
“The limited information available indicates that development plans for the next decades designate the Chinese Ili Prefecture as a key grain-production area, with less attention for rice. Perhaps this makes demand scenarios 2 and 4 (both 50%
A farm worker ploughs a paddy field with a water buffalo in China. Too much water intensive agriculture could mean the end of Lake Balkhash (Image: Laurent Belanger, CC-SA-4.0).
rice cropping) less probable and more moderately increasing demands (scenario AC3 with 15% rice cropping) more likely,” it said. But even with less water-intensive crops, the consensus of the researchers is that China would still overuse the waters.
The researchers mainly explored China’s responsibilities in the face of global climate change, but how could Kazakh authorities get China to abide by them?
Nothing new
The attempts to address China’s usage of the Ili river started more than a decade ago. Suggestions that Kazakhstan could simply negotiate its way to sufficiently limiting China’s draining of Lake Balkhash are nothing new. Recommendations by EU experts on the topic can be seen as far back as 2010.
An article by Kazakhstan Today quoted Russell Frost, an EU project lead on the “Introduction of Tools for Ecological Politics in Kazakhstan” initiative, as saying all those years ago that "it will be necessary to conduct serious negotiations with the People's Republic of China, because the springs and rivers that flow into the Balkhash, their upper reaches are on the territory of the PRC".
"Having analysed the agreement that is currently in force on water resources management between the Republic of Kazakh- stan and the PRC, I can say that there are no specific mecha- nisms in this agreement that would restrict water intake in the upper reaches of those rivers that flow into Lake Balkhash and whose drainages are located on the territory of China."
"This agreement is unilateral, because it is practically only
in the interests of China," Frost added, while suggesting that
a new fully functioning document needs to be developed jointly by Kazakhstan and China that would restrict water intake from the upper reaches of the Ili river. He also stressed the necessity of forming Kazakhstan’s own national strategy for the conserva- tion and management of Balkhash water resources in order to strengthen Kazakhstan’s negotiating position. That included advice on forming a single regulatory body on water issues.
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