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74 Opinion
bne June 2021
"At the moment, water resources management in Kazakhstan is fragmented and suffers from conflicts of interest. International experience suggests that a single regulatory body is the right approach, integrating aspects of water use and wastewater disposal. In addition, such a body should not have an economic interest in water use," Frost concluded.
The recommendations are still as relevant today as they were back when Frost voiced them, and that serves to underline the lack of any real effort on Kazakhstan’s part to address the lake’s slow but quickening and inexorable road to demise. That does not paint a reassuring picture as regards Balkhash’s chances going forward.
In 2018, the then director of the transboundary rivers department at the Kazakh Ministry of Agriculture, Igor Kovalenko, told the local Kazinform news agency: “China, of course, is a dynamically developing country, the second biggest economy in the world. And it may soon become the biggest, and the understanding of environmental problems in China
is also changing. One example is that for the first time in the existence of the Ministry of Ecology in China, it is now headed by an ecologist. A real ecologist who deals with environmental issues – this already says a lot. And the fact that China exists at the expense of natural resources will not end well. Currently, in many countries there is a [growing] understanding of the [importance] of preserving the ecological environment."
Kovalenko also briefly mentioned the existence of ongoing negotiations between Kazakhstan and China, in which Kazakhstan was arguing for maintaining water flows into
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Balkhash at appropriate levels. The recommended levels would mean the lake’s water level dropping no lower than 134 metres. Anything below that would be catastrophic for the body of water.
Doomed by Kazakh plans alone?
The primary reason for China’s exploitation of Balkhash can be determined as the attempt by Beijing to attract Han Chinese settlers to Xinjiang as one way of suppressing the Muslim minorities: the ethnic-Uighurs, ethnic-Kazakhs and ethnic- Kyrgyz, among others, in the region. This doubles as part of the effort to boost China’s agricultural output.
But even in the event that China, in a highly unlikely outcome, completely abandons this strategy, Kazakhstan’s own plans to increase use of the Ili river remain a big anxiety.
Kazakhstan has committed to increasingly ramping up its agricultural production. It is eyeing the possibility of becoming a regional food hub. The catch is that Kazakhstan hopes
to supply most of hub’s food to China – a kind of de facto outsourcing of food output generated for China that ties into Kazakhstan's aspirations for further integration into the BRI. China's growing middle class has created a demand for organic food that Kazakhstan aims to specialise in.
So even aside from China’s use of the waters upstream from Balkhash, the risk of a “second Aral Sea” scenario could stem from Kazakhstan’s plans alone.
The chances of effectively addressing these concerns at both ends of the Ili might, thus, border on the impossible.
Philanthropy in Russia – not for the faint-hearted
Stephen Bierman in Moscow
Wealth in Russia comes with no small number of headaches. But one of the more surprising ones, linked to money, is that sometimes you can’t even give it away.
Philanthropy has somewhat failed to launch as a mainstream culture amid the nation’s 30-year roller-coaster ride from
a command economy to a capitalist model. The Soviet Union’s paternalistic approach eroded “giving” as a private institutional practice. Then the removal of the state itself in the 1990s managed to make things even worse.
The issue isn’t whether charity exists or not; Russians are plenty generous and sympathetic, and helping others is a core part of orthodox religious values.
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The number one issue is a lack of organisation, structure and capacity to scale up. If, for example, tech billionaire Bill Gates wants to donate to a cause in the USA or Europe it’s just a case of deciding how much and on what. The organisations are in place to process it. The rest more or less can take care of itself.
If it were only so simple in Russia... but it is not. So when the Bill Gates-level types in Russia seek to donate, it's not like there are widespread and mature systems in place that allocate to the needy. It is not that it doesn’t happen. It does, but that’s more the exception than the rule. The act of philanthropy involves something more than a simple donation; often it involves creating an organisation itself, or requires a social or economic position.