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Kazakhstan has serious environmental issues such as radiation fromnuclear testing sites, the shrinking of theAral sea, anddesertification of former agricultural land. These issues are due in large part to Kazakhstan's years under theSoviet Union.
Partly because of the country's enormous semi-aridsteppe, the Soviet government usedKazakhstan as itsnuclear testing site. Along with near-absentpollution controls, this has contributed to an alarmingly high rate ofdisease in many rural areas. Kazakhstan has identified at least two majorecological disasters within its borders: the shrinking of theAral Sea, andradioactive contamination at theSemipalatinsk nuclear testing facility (in fact a large zone south ofKourchatov (Курчатов)) and along the Chinese border.
TheCentral Asian Regional Environmental Center is located in Kazakhstan,[1] which fosters regional cooperation on environmental issues.
Most ofKazakhstan’s water supply has been polluted by industrial andagricultural runoff and, in some places,radioactivity. TheAral Sea, which is shared withUzbekistan, has shrunk to three separate bodies of water because of water drawdowns in its tributary rivers. A Soviet-erabiological weapons site is a threat because it is located on aformer island in the Aral Sea that is now connected with the mainland. The reduction in the Aral Sea’s water surface has exacerbated regional climatic extremes, and agricultural soil has been damaged by salt deposits and eroded by wind. Desertification has eliminated substantial tracts of agricultural land. Plants in industrial centers lack controls on effluents into the air and water. The Samey region in the northeast has long-term radiation contamination from Soviet-era weapons testing. TheMinistry of Environmental Protection is underfunded and given low priority. Some new environmental regulation of the oil industry began in 2003, but new oil operations on Kazakhstan’s Caspian coast add to that sea’s already grave pollution. International programs to save the Aral and Caspian seas have not received meaningful cooperation from Kazakhstan or other member nations.
Kazakhstan had a 2018Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 8.23/10, ranking it 26th globally out of 172 countries.[2]
TheAral Sea covers 68,000 square kilometres (26,300 sq mi) with Kazakhstan to the north and Uzbekistan to the south.[3]
Soviet irrigation projects begun in the 1960s and other environmental challenges have severely depleted this once massive inland sea and by 2007, it had shrunk to 10 percent of its original size.[3]
The efforts included Syr Darya Control & Northern Aral Sea (NAS) project.[4] The $86 million NAS project, funded jointly by the World Bank through a loan of $65 million and the Government of Kazakhstan which covered the rest, was designed to mitigate the environmental and economic damage to the region, sustain and increase agriculture and fishing in the Syr Darya basin and secure the continued existence of the Northern Aral Sea (also known as the Small Sea) by improving environmental and ecological conditions in the delta area.[4]
In addition, three revival programs were designed for implementation in the Aral Sea Basin (ASBP 1, ASBP 2 and ASBP 3).[4] The most detailed and comprehensive of these, ASBP 3, covers the 2011-2015 period and was developed during Kazakhstan’s presidency of the executive committee of IFAS.[4]
This article incorporates text from this source, which is in thepublic domain. Country Studies.Federal Research Division.
