16th-largest lake: Disaster feared as basin is drained for agriculture

The sixteenth-largest lake in the world, Lake Balkhash in Kazakhstan, is drying up. Like the pollution-plagued Aral Sea, which straddles Kazakhstan's western border, Lake Balkhash in the east end of the country, 400 kilometres north of the city of Almaty, is slowly disappearing. Kazakhstan and neighbouring China are drawing off water from the drainage basin that feeds Central Asia's second-largest lake at such a rapid rate there is not enough water flow to maintain existing lake levels. As a result, United Nations environmental experts say the lake, which is 605 km long and 70 km wide -- a little larger than Lake Ontario -- is evaporating rapidly. The lake has already shrunk by more than 2,000 square kilometres, creating conditions for yet another environmental disaster in the region. The Aral Sea, once the world's fourth-largest lake, is now a wasteland. Its drainage basin was destroyed by misguided attempts by the former Soviet Union to divert water from two rivers that fed the Aral Sea to irrigate cotton fields. Once larger than Lake Huron, it is only about 20% of the size it was in 1960. The UN Development Program (UNDP) is now warning Kazakhstan should brace for yet another potential environmental catastrophe. Releasing a report this week on "Human Development in Kazakhstan," UNDP experts warned failure to act quickly to regulate water flows in the region could seal the fate of Lake Balkhash.