Thanks to the use of water-saving technologies used by farmers in the Kyzylorda region of Kazakhstan, it was possible to save 200 million cubic meters of water and send it to the Aral Sea. This was reported by the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation of the Republic.
According to the department, water-saving technologies were applied in 55 thousand hectares of local rice fields, whose total area in the region is 84 thousand hectares. Thanks to this, around one billion cubic meters of water were sent to the sea during this year’s irrigation season, three times more than last year.
About two billion cubic meters of water have been sent to the northern Aral since the beginning of the year. It reached 22 billion cubic meters in the sea.
“In addition to water diplomacy and close collaboration with our colleagues from Central Asian countries, the introduction of water-saving technologies plays an important role in filling the Aral Sea. Its use saves hundreds of millions of cubic meters of water and allocates it to the sea. To achieve this, we have increased subsidies for farmers’ costs for introducing water-saving technologies from 50% to 80%. And in the next three years, the amount of subsidies for peasant farms that use irrigation water using water-saving technologies will increase from 50% to 85%.” – said the head of the Ministry of Water of the Republic of Kazakhstan Nurzhan Nurzhigitov.
The water level in the Aral Sea began to drop in the 1960s of the last century. In 1989, the sea was divided into two bodies of water, connected by the now-defunct Berg Strait: the northern (small) and southern (large) Aral Sea.
