アラル海、北側の水量がほぼ倍増　カザフ

【アルマトイ（カザフスタン）ＡＦＰ＝時事】カザフスタンは１３日、南北に分かれているアラル海の北側部分の水量が２００８年以降、ほぼ倍増したと発表した。（写真は、アラル海近くのウズベキスタン北西部ムイナクの「船の墓場」として知られる地区）
　カザフとウズベキスタンの間に横たわるアラル海は、かつては水深４０メートル、面積６万８０００平方キロの世界第４位の大きさの湖だったが、旧ソ連時代のかんがいプロジェクトの影響で大部分が干上がった。
　しかし、カザフのエコロジー・地質・天然資源省は、２００８年以降、北の「小アラル海」の水量は「４２％増加し、２７０億立方メートルに達した」ことを明らかにした。
　同省はＡＦＰに対し、水量が増えた理由について「（北部）アラル海保全プロジェクトの第１弾を実施したおかげだ」と述べた。
　プロジェクトにはカザフ政府と世界銀行が資金を提供。アラル海からの水の流失を防ぐためのインフラ新設などを推進している。２０２４年単年で、アラル海に注ぐシルダリア川から小アラル海に２６億立方メートルの水を引き込んで塩分濃度をほぼ４分の１まで低下させ、水生生物の生育環境を改善させた。
　旧ソ連時代には、シルダリア川ともう一つの河川、アムダリア川は、主に綿花・コメ栽培のために農業転用され、１９６０年代から２０１０年代にかけてアラル海の面積は最大９０％縮小。１９８０年代後半の時点で、アラル海はウズベク側の大部分が干上がった「大アラル」と、カザフ側の小アラルに分離した。【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2025/01/14-17:15）

Kazakhstan said on Monday the northern part of the Aral Sea had nearly doubled in volume since 2008, a rare environmental success story in a region plagued by pollution.
The Aral Sea between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan was once the fourth largest lake in the world, before Soviet irrigation projects caused most of it to dry up.
The transformation of the freshwater sea -- once 40 metres (130 feet) deep and spanning 68,000 square kilometres (176,000 square miles) -- has been dubbed one of the world's worst environmental catastrophes.
Since 2008, the volume of water in the northern, smaller part of the sea has increased by 42 percent and reached 27 billion cubic metres (950 billion cubic feet), the Central Asian republic's water resources ministry said.
This was thanks to the implementation of Phase One of the (Northern) Aral Sea conservation project, the ministry told AFP.
The scheme, funded jointly by the Kazakh government and the World Bank, has involved constructing new infrastructure to prevent water flowing out of the sea.
In 2024 alone, authorities directed 2.6 billion cubic metres of water from the Syr Darya river into the northern part, reducing the salinity of the water by a factor of almost four and promoting aquatic life, it said.
Efforts to save the Aral Sea have required close cooperation between the five former Soviet republics of Central Asia, who set annual water quotas for the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, the two rivers that feed the Aral.
Under the Soviet Union, the rivers were diverted to use for agriculture -- mainly for cotton and rice cultivation, causing the sea to shrink by up to 90 percent in size from the 1960s to the 2010s.
By the late 1980s, the sea had split into two sections -- a larger section on the Uzbek side that has mostly dried out and a smaller section in the northern Kazakh side which has become the focus of conservation efforts.
The drying of the Aral Sea has caused multiple animal species to go extinct and virtually ended human activity in the area.
In addition, winds have carried tens of millions of tonnes of salt and toxic dust from the dried-up lake bed across Central Asia, causing cancer and respiratory diseases.