Within the regional study Broadening land management options for improved economic sustainability across Central Asia under the ELD initiative (Economics of Land Degradation), ICRAF Central Asia Office contributed a case study on ecosystem services and their monetary value of the Ili River Delta as a wetland complex representative for Central Asia without severe degradation yet.
This particular ELD study was a spin-off of the project Ecosystem conservation and sustainable land use in the Ili-Delta, Balkhash Lake, Kazakhstan, under decreasing water resources. That project was implemented from 2014 to 2016 by University of Greifswald, ICRAF, and Kazakh National University.
Today, it is an open question, how the runoff of the Ili River and thus vegetation and ecosystem services in the Ili Delta will develop in the near future. Though, it is very likely that the runoff into the Ili Delta will decrease, mainly due to increasing agricultural activities and water withdrawal upstream of the delta in Kazakhstan and China (Imentai et al., 2015). Furthermore, climate change, due to glacier melt, may result in lower runoffs mid of this century as suggested for many rivers of Central Asia.
Along with a decreasing inflow into the Ili Delta, it is to expect that water levels of the water bodies in the delta will drop. Furthermore, periodically submerged areas of the delta will become non-submerged throughout the year. Along with those changes in water levels and duration of being submerged, groundwater levels will drop, too, as has been seen in the Aral Sea region. Along with those changes of the water resources, the following ecosystem changes can be expected:
- Part of submerged dense reed turns into non-submerged dense reed. Thus, livestock herders gain land for grazing and haymaking. Spawning space and space for young fish to grow up will be reduced.
- Part of today’s non-submerged dense reed will turn into open reed and shrub vegetation, which offers less fodder for livestock.
- Open reed and shrub vegetation will turn into shrub vegetation, which again offers less fodder for livestock.
Livestock herders from the upstream part of the delta reported during the interview campaign in 2015 that they already suffer from land degradation so that part of the livestock was moved to the downstream villages Jideli, Karoi, and Kuigan, while part of the herders already considered to give up herding. Along with decreasing water inflow from upstream into the Ili Delta, the following changes in the ecosystem services included into this study can be expected:
- Provisioning of fodder will be compromised, because the area from which fodder is provided most likely will shrink. Furthermore, the productivity of the ecosystems that provide fodder will decrease. The monetary value at stake was 6.6 million USD per year.
- The ecosystem service provisioning of fish (valued 2.7 million USD per year) will decrease, because the spawning space and space for fish to grow up will shrink.
- Provisioning of biomass will be compromised, too, because the area of submerged reed will be reduced. The potential of biomass utilization as feedstock for a number of value chains (like fodder or cellulose based materials) was estimated 1.1 to 9.8 million USD annually, depending on investments.
- Tourism will be impacted to a minor extent (annual value of 5.8 million USD). The large and expensive tourist bases are located at the major water bodies, which will carry water even if the inflow drops. Smaller tourist bases at the margin of the delta will lose customers when the nearby water bodies fall dry.