Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan will coordinate actions to solve the problems of the Aral Sea basin. At a meeting of the Senate of the Parliament, an agreement between the countries on cooperation in the field of ecology and environmental protection was ratified, MIR 24 correspondent Alena Gracheva reported.
The Aral Sea basin currently contains 110 billion tons of toxic dust . Dried fertilizers washed away from fields, sea salt and particles of bottom silt – a dangerous mixture rises into the air, spreads across Kazakhstan and far beyond its borders. As a result, the number of respiratory diseases is growing.
“The main wind rose (68%) goes to the south – to our neighbors: to Karakalpakstan, Turkmenistan and further – to Iran. About 20% falls on the coastal Kazalinsky district. And about 12-15% goes to the north. Large particles settle in a 50-kilometer zone, small particles fly away further – they are found in the Arctic Ocean, to Norway, in Greenland, in the northern and southern parts of the Tien Shan, in the Himalayas,” said Marat Narbayev, Deputy Director of the Executive Directorate of the International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan.
The largest share of degraded lands in the Aral Sea region is in Uzbekistan – three million hectares. At a meeting of the Senate of the Parliament of Kazakhstan, the neighboring countries agreed to jointly combat the consequences of shallowing and revive the Aral Sea. They also outlined the first steps in this direction.
“Development of joint measures to improve the environmental situation in the Aral Sea basin, which will allow coordinating the actions of the Kazakh and Uzbek sides to mitigate the consequences of the environmental crisis in the Aral Sea and stabilize the environmental situation in the region, as well as to contain sand and salt storms, which are a serious and large-scale problem,” said Olga Bulavkina, a member of the Senate of the Parliament of the Republic of Kazakhstan.
Environmental organizations are planting saxaul on the bottom of the dried-up Aral Sea. By 2025, they plan to green more than one million hectares in Kazakhstan alone. This is almost half of the entire dried-up part on the Kazakh side. The survival rate of saxaul is being studied in the experimental area. Its purpose is to contain the spread of toxic salt.
“With a normal planting of saxaul, the standard is 30%. However, we cannot always achieve such indicators – the conditions are very difficult. In the future, the calculation is that this saxaul will itself give seed material. And then there should be natural overgrowth of this area,” explained ecologist Zauresh Alimbetova.
Similar work is being carried out in Uzbekistan. Only the planting area there is twice as large – about two million hectares. The shallowing of the Aral Sea is considered one of the largest ecological disasters of our time. Over half a century, its volume has decreased by 10 times.
https://mir24.tv/news/16606515/spasenie-aralskogo-morya-kazahstan-i-uzbekistan-obedinyat-usiliya-v-sferah-ekologii-i-ohrany-okruzhayushchei-sredy
