Tran boundary Pool of the Irtysh River: Problems’ Solutions of Municipal Facilities and Urban Development

Institute for Water and Environmental Problems, SB RAS, Molodezhnaya str. 1, Barnaul, 656038, Russia

^* Corresponding author: bella@iwep.ru

Abstract

The relevance of the study, due to the water difficult environmental situation increasing in the transboundary river basin (TRB) of Irtysh is related to the failure to address the issues of coordinated water use in the certain national segments: the Irtysh basin and its large left tributaries, the rivers Ishim and Tobol within the borders of Kazakhstan, China and Russia. The purpose of the study is to assess current processes of the water management system in the TRB formation and functioning, to identify current and potential problems of water use and to find ways to eliminate neutralize and prevent them in the future. The leading methods of research are system-dialectical, which provides for the water management systems study of the basin in question at the stage of formation, functioning and future development; as well as a comparative geographic method aimed at identifying and analyzing individual water management systems of the Irtysh TRB. Results of the study: The main water management problems in the Irtysh TBD were identified, their evaluation was determined and the their manifestation features in each of the identified national natural and economic subsystems were determined, the directions of their coordinated decision by all basin countries based on the methodology of strategic management adopted and widely implemented by the international scientific community. The significance of the study showed the severity of water management problems and the asymmetry of their solutions in different national segments of the Irtysh TRB, mainly due to incompleteness of the institutional environment for water resources management and inconsistency of the countries interests within its borders.