The level of the world’s largest inland sea has been falling steadily since 2006. The Kazakh authorities are taking this drying-up increasingly seriously.
As she does every morning, Sonia, a retired 60-something woman (who didn’t want to give her name) works out on the pedestrian promenade of Aktaou, a port city in Kazakhstan facing the Caspian Sea. The receding shoreline? “Of course, everyone can see it!” she exclaims, pointing to the rocks and wild plants beneath the promenade. “It used to be that the water came all the way up here”, dozens of metres below today’s level.
Further along the coast, small shells still line the sand, well away from the first waves of salt water. They, too, are a sign that just a few years ago the water was there, before it began to recede, without interruption since 2006. According to the Kazakhstan Institute of Hydrobiology and Ecology, the depth of this inland sea almost the size of Norway (371,000 square kilometers), located between Europe and Asia, is shrinking by 25 centimeters per year. In total, the Caspian Sea’s depth has decreased by 2 meters since 2000 and, in eighteen years, it has shrunk by 22,000 square kilometers, half of which is located in the Kazakh part.
For this Central Asian republic, the situation is reminiscent of the fate of the Aral Sea, between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, which dried up by 90% during the Soviet era.
The sea « breathes »
Scientists are not as concerned about the Caspian Sea, although the reasons for its decline are still debated. Some attribute this phenomenon to climate change and tectonic plate movements; others explain it by saying that the sea « breathes, » naturally alternating between periods of regression and transgression. In fact, between 1930 and 1977, the Caspian Sea receded by nearly 30 meters along the coasts of Kazakhstan, only to experience a period of significant water level rise between 1978 and 1995. This rise was so substantial that some coastal cities in the country were partially flooded.
« Many people remember this period of rising water, which is why few are genuinely concerned about this issue, » notes Kirill Osin, an ecologist and activist. Contacted by Le Monde, the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation assures that « there is currently no problem of the Caspian Sea drying up. » « Of course, the drop in sea level will have negative consequences, which requires study, » the ministry adds.
read more : Le Monde
Source : Le Monde
