Summary of desalination issues in Central Asia

1. Summary of desalination issues in Central Asia The Regional Environmental Centre for Central Asia - CAREC Almaty, 2017

2. Desalination in Central Asia:background Natural conditions • an arid and sub-arid region; • serious cross-border problems of desertification; • natural deep salinity of soil in a significant part of the territory; • total land fund of the Aral Sea basin is 155 million hectares, of which about 32.6 million hectares are considered suitable for the irrigated agriculture. Socio-economic • consequences of the drying out of the Aral Sea - desert winds depositing millions of tons of (often polluted) salts on agricultural fields all over the basin • insufficient and deteriorated drainage systems

3. Characteristics of the land reclamation fund of the Central Asian region (thousand hectares) V.A. Dukhovny, H. Yakubov, P.D. Umarov, Drainage and control of salvation: overview of the Central Asian problems

4. Desalination in Central Asia: scale of Land degradation Mirzabaev et al.2016- Land degradation hotspots in Central Asia (in red), a negative change in NDVI between1982 and 1984 and 2006. Source Adapted from Le et al. (2014)

5. Desalination, brackish water and soil contamination in CA • About 95% of the return water is collector-drainage water, drained from irrigated land, the rest is from wastewater from industrial and municipal enterprises; • More than 51% of the total volume of return water is diverted by collectors to rivers; About 33% - in depressions and 16% of return waters are reused for irrigation; • As a result of the discharges of return waters, several hundred water reservoirs were created in the depressions, namely, Aydar-Arnasaysystem of lakes (Uzbekistan), Sarykamysh, Sudochyie; • AltynAsyr a complex system of irrigation and drainage facilities designed to collect collector-drainage mineralized waters from agricultural lands of the region. • On the local level - WUA are responsible for maintaining of the on-farm collector drainage network

6. Drainage in CA Kazakhstan In Syr Darya basin, from 2.1 to 2.5 billion m3 of the return waters form annually, of which 40-45% are diverted to local depressions, ponds and wetlands, and the rest go to the rivers Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan Non-saline lands are mainly located in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Part of this area, which is irrigated, located within naturally drained zones, i.e. in the upstream of the Syr Darya and Amudarya rivers. Groundwaters there are deeply buried and do not participate in soil-forming processes, so irrigated lands are represented by unsealed soils Turkmenistan Collector-drainage flow whichis formed from the irrigated lands of the 5-regions of Turkmenistan (velayats) and Khorezm region of Uzbekistan goes to the Altyn Gasyr lake Uzbekistan In Amudarya basin 50-65% of the CDN of Bukhara, Navoi and Karakalpakstan regions are allocated to the local depressions. In Syrdarya basin, 70% of the drainage runoff formed in the middle part is taken to the natural depression Arnasai

7. Common regional desalination issues • Geomorphological conditions of irrigated territory in Central Asia; • Over the past decade, the meliorative state of the lands has deteriorated in all CA countries; • High potential risk of secondary salination in irrigated lands; • Strong and medium saline lands increased by 57% in the Amu Darya basin, by 78% in the Syr Darya basin. the reasons: • deterioration of the operation of the collector-drainage network (CDN), the breakdown of drainage facilities, the unresolved issues of operation, maintenance and repair of the CDN

8. CAREC experience: • Awareness Raising on return, reuse water management in Central Asia, EU, 2011-2013. 5 national report on return waters; • Water Quality, UNECE, 2009-2012, 2016-present. Regional working group and cooperation platform, harmonisation of WQ standards in CA; • “Soil and water management” trainings for local farmers in small transboundary basins Isfara, Aspara, 2012-2016.

9. Thank you