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Location: Central Asia, northwest of China
Geographic coordinates: 48 00 N, 68 00 E
Map references: Commonwealth of Independent States
Area:
total: 2,717,300 sq km
land: 2,669,800 sq km
water: 47,500 sq km
Area - comparative: slightly less than four times the size
of Texas
Land boundaries:
total: 12,012 km
border countries: China 1,533 km, Kyrgyzstan 1,051 km, Russia
6,846 km, Turkmenistan 379 km, Uzbekistan 2,203 km
Coastline: 0 km (landlocked)
note: Kazakhstan borders the Aral Sea, now split into two
bodies of water (1,070 km), and the Caspian Sea (1,894 km)
Maritime claims: none (landlocked)
Climate: continental, cold winters and hot summers, arid
and semiarid
Terrain: extends from the Volga to the Altai Mountains and
from the plains in western Siberia to oases and desert in Central
Asia
Elevation extremes:
lowest point: Vpadina Kaundy -132 m
highest point: Khan Tangiri Shyngy (Pik Khan-Tengri) 6,995
m
Natural resources: major deposits of petroleum, natural
gas, coal, iron ore, manganese, chrome ore, nickel, cobalt, copper,
molybdenum, lead, zinc, bauxite, gold, uranium
Land use:
arable land: 12%
permanent crops: 11%
permanent pastures: 57%
forests and woodland: 4%
other: 16% (1996 est.)
Irrigated land: 22,000 sq km (1996 est.)
Natural hazards: earthquakes in the south, mud slides around
Almaty
Environment - current issues: radioactive or toxic chemical
sites associated with its former defense industries and test ranges
are found throughout the country and pose health risks for humans
and animals; industrial pollution is severe in some cities; because
the two main rivers which flowed into the Aral Sea have been diverted
for irrigation, it is drying up and leaving behind a harmful layer
of chemical pesticides and natural salts; these substances are then
picked up by the wind and blown into noxious dust storms; pollution
in the Caspian Sea; soil pollution from overuse of agricultural
chemicals and salination from poor infrastructure and wasteful irrigation
practices
Environment - international agreements:
party to: Biodiversity, Climate Change, Desertification,
Endangered Species, Ozone Layer Protection, Ship Pollution
signed, but not ratified: Climate Change-Kyoto Protocol
Geography - note: landlocked
Kazakstan
Country
Formal Name: Republic of Kazakstan.
Short Form: Kazakstan.
Term for Citizens: Kazakstani(s).
Capital: Almaty, scheduled to move to Aqmola 1998.
Date of Independence: December 16, 1991.
Geography
Size: Approximately 2,717,300 square kilometers.
Topography: Substantial variation according to
region; Altay and Tian Shan ranges in east and northeast, about
12 percent of territory, reach elevation of nearly 7,000 meters;
more than three-quarters of territory desert or semidesert, with
elevations below sea level along Caspian Sea coast in far west.
Climate: Continental and very dry except in eastern
moun-tains, where snowfall heavy; wide temperature variation between
winter and summer.
Data as of March 1996
Kazakstan
Physical Environment
With an area of about 2,717,300 square kilometers, Kazakstan is
more than twice the combined size of the other four Central Asian
states. The country borders Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan
to the south; Russia to the north; Russia and the Caspian Sea to
the west; and China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region to the east.
Topography and Drainage
There is considerable topographical variation within Kazakstan.
The highest elevation, Khan Tengri Mountain, on the Kyrgyz border
in the Tian Shan range, is 6,995 meters; the lowest point, at Karagiye,
in the Caspian Depression in the west, is 132 meters below sea level
. Only 12.4 percent of Kazakstan is mountainous, with most of the
mountains located in the Altay and Tian Shan ranges of the east
and northeast, although the Ural Mountains extend southward from
Russia into the northern part of west-central Kazakstan. Many of
the peaks of the Altay and Tian Shan ranges are snow covered year-round,
and their run-off is the source for most of Kazakstan's rivers and
streams.
Except for the Tobol, Ishim, and Irtysh rivers (the Kazak names
for which are, respectively, Tobyl, Esil, and Ertis), portions of
which flow through Kazakstan, all of Kazakstan's rivers and streams
are part of landlocked systems. They either flow into isolated bodies
of water such as the Caspian Sea or simply disappear into the steppes
and deserts of central and southern Kazakstan. Many rivers, streams,
and lakes are seasonal, evaporating in summer. The three largest
bodies of water are Lake Balkhash, a partially fresh, partially
saline lake in the east, near Almaty, and the Caspian and Aral seas,
both of which lie partially within Kazakstan.
Some 9.4 percent of Kazakstan's land is mixed prairie and forest
or treeless prairie, primarily in the north or in the basin of the
Ural River in the west. More than three-quarters of the country,
including the entire west and most of the south, is either semidesert
(33.2 percent) or desert (44 percent). The terrain in these regions
is bare, eroded, broken uplands, with sand dunes in the Qizilqum
(red sand; in the Russian form, Kyzylkum) and Moyunqum (in the Russian
form, Moin Kum) deserts, which occupy south-central Kazakstan. Most
of the country lies at between 200 and 300 meters above sea level,
but Kazakstan's Caspian shore includes some of the lowest elevations
on Earth.
Data as of March 1996
Kazakstan
Climate
Because Kazakstan is so far from the oceans, the climate is sharply
continental and very dry. Precipitation in the mountains of the
east averages as much as 600 millimeters per year, mostly in the
form of snow, but most of the republic receives only 100 to 200
millimeters per year. Precipitation totals less than 100 millimeters
in the south-central regions around Qyzylorda. A lack of precipitation
makes Kazakstan a sunny republic; the north averages 120 clear days
a year, and the south averages 260. The lack of moderating bodies
of water also means that temperatures can vary widely. Average winter
temperatures are -3°C in the north and 18°C in the south;
summer temperatures average 19°C in the north and 28°-30°C
in the south. Within locations differences are extreme, and temperature
can change very suddenly. The winter air temperature can fall to
-50°C, and in summer the ground temperature can reach as high
as 70°C.
Data as of March 1996
Kazakstan
Environmental Problems
The environment of Kazakstan has been badly damaged by human activity.
Most of the water in Kazakstan is polluted by industrial effluents,
pesticide and fertilizer residue, and, in some places, radioactivity.
The most visible damage has been to the Aral Sea, which as recently
as the 1970s was larger than any of the Great Lakes of North America
save Lake Superior. The sea began to shrink rapidly when sharply
increased irrigation and other demands on the only significant tributaries,
the Syrdariya and the Amu Darya (the latter reaching the Aral from
neighboring Uzbekistan), all but eliminated inflow. By 1993 the
Aral Sea had lost an estimated 60 percent of its volume, in the
process breaking into three unconnected segments. Increasing salinity
and reduced habitat have killed the Aral Sea's fish, hence destroying
its once-active fishing industry, and the receding shoreline has
left the former port of Aral'sk more than sixty kilometers from
the water's edge. The depletion of this large body of water has
increased temperature variations in the region, which in turn have
had an impact on agriculture. A much greater agricultural impact,
however, has come from the salt- and pesticide-laden soil that the
wind is known to carry as far away as the Himalaya Mountains and
the Pacific Ocean. Deposition of this heavily saline soil on nearby
fields effectively sterilizes them. Evidence suggests that salts,
pesticides, and residues of chemical fertilizers are also adversely
affecting human life around the former Aral Sea; infant mortality
in the region approaches 10 percent, compared with the 1991 national
rate of 2.7 percent.
By contrast, the water level of the Caspian Sea has been rising
steadily since 1978 for reasons that scientists have not been able
to explain fully. At the northern end of the sea, more than a million
hectares of land in Atyrau Province have been flooded. Experts estimate
that if current rates of increase persist, the coastal city of Atyrau,
eighty-eight other population centers, and many of Kazakstan's Caspian
oil fields could be submerged by 2020.
Wind erosion has also had an impact in the northern and central
parts of the republic because of the introduction of wide-scale
dryland wheat farming. In the 1950s and 1960s, much soil was lost
when vast tracts of Kazakstan's prairies were plowed under as part
of Khrushchev's Virgin Lands agricultural project. By the mid-1990s,
an estimated 60 percent of the republic's pastureland was in various
stages of desertification.
Industrial pollution is a bigger concern in Kazakstan's manufacturing
cities, where aging factories pump huge quantities of unfiltered
pollutants into the air and groundwater. The capital, Almaty, is
particularly threatened, in part because of the postindependence
boom in private automobile ownership.
The gravest environmental threat to Kazakstan comes from radiation,
especially in the Semey (Semipalatinsk) region of the northeast,
where the Soviet Union tested almost 500 nuclear weapons, 116 of
them above ground. Often, such tests were conducted without evacuating
or even alerting the local population. Although nuclear testing
was halted in 1990, radiation poisoning, birth defects, severe anemia,
and leukemia are very common in the area .
With some conspicuous exceptions, lip service has been the primary
official response to Kazakstan's ecological problems. In February
1989, opposition to Soviet nuclear testing and its ill effects in
Kazakstan led to the creation of one of the republic's largest and
most influential grass-roots movements, Nevada-Semipalatinsk, which
was founded by Kazak poet and public figure Olzhas Suleymenov. In
the first week of the movement's existence, Nevada-Semipalatinsk
gathered more than 2 million signatures from Kazakstanis of all
ethnic groups on a petition to Gorbachev demanding the end of nuclear
testing in Kazakstan. After a year of demonstrations and protests,
the test ban took effect in 1990. It remained in force in 1996,
although in 1995 at least one unexploded device reportedly was still
in position near Semey.
Once its major ecological objective was achieved, Nevada-Semipalatinsk
made various attempts to broaden into a more general political movement;
it has not pursued a broad ecological or "green" agenda. A very
small green party, Tagibat, made common cause with the political
opposition in the parliament of 1994.
The government has established a Ministry of Ecology and Bioresources,
with a separate administration for radioecology, but the ministry's
programs are underfunded and given low priority. In 1994 only 23
percent of budgeted funds were actually allotted to environmental
programs. Many official meetings and conferences are held (more
than 300 have been devoted to the problem of the Aral Sea alone),
but few practical programs have gone into operation. In 1994 the
World Bank , the International Monetary Fund (IMF-- ), and the United
States Environmental Protection Agency agreed to give Kazakstan
US$62 million to help the country overcome ecological problems.
Data as of March 1996
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