Water woes in Kazakhstan

Located a two-hour drive from the Kazakh border, the area around the Chinese city of Yining hardly seems beset by water difficulties. The land, well watered by the Ili River and its tributaries, remains lush and green despite the brutal summer heat. Seasoned local farmers are unable to recall a time when their irrigation channels dried up.

But this border area – as well as other, drier parts of northwest China's Xinjiang province – is at the heart of a battle for one of Central Asia's most overlooked resources: water.

On the upstream side is Beijing, an economic behemoth committed to shrinking its growing wealth gap by developing the country's interior. The plan, sometimes known as the Go West policy, hinges in part on access to water for drinking, energy generation, agriculture and industry, especially in arid areas such as Xinjiang.

Downstream are Kazakhstan and Siberian Russia, developing in their own right but a far cry from China's breakneck growth. Rivers that originate in China – mainly the Irtysh, which crosses the Kazakh northeast before entering Russia, and the Ili, which ends in Kazakhstan – are essential to the two states, for the same reasons that Beijing needs them.

Ecological impacts

Economic demands aside, environmentalists worry that if the Chinese continue to increase their diversions from the Ili and Irtysh, the damage to the regional environment will be irreversible. But as the rows of new apartment houses springing up in Yining and other parts of Xinjiang attest, China is unlikely to apply the brakes on western development.