Environmentalists, Experts Critical of Plan to Transfer Water From Russia to China

A recent proposal to transfer as much a billion cubic meters of water from Russia’s Altai region to China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region has raised concerns among Russian environmentalists and experts.The possibility of selling water to China was raised by Russian Agriculture Minister Alexander Tkachev during a recent meeting in Beijing. He said Russia was “ready” to transfer 70 million cubic meters of freshwater -- an amount that could eventually be raised as high as 1 billion cubic meters -- from the Gilevsky reservoir in Altai to China, via Kazakhstan.“In the near future we will hold consultations with our colleagues from Kazakhstan on this issue,” he said...