Geography of Kazakhstan the water in Kazakhstan is polluted by industrial effluents, pesticide and fertilizer residue, and, in some places, radioactive elements. 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 Syr Darya and the Amu Darya (the latter reaching the Aral from neighboring Uzbekistan), all but eliminated inflow. During the Soviet Era, Kazakhstan received water from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan,
Science and technology in Uzbekistan from these contracts have ‘generated USS 680 billion (almost US$ 300 million), providing US$7.8 million in import substitution’, according to the report. One-quarter (26%) of the proposals vetted concerned biotechnologies, 19% new materials, 16% medicine, 15% oil and gas, 13% energy and metallurgy and 12% chemical technologies. In the region, research spending has hovered around the 0.2–0.3% mark for the past decade but, in 2013, Uzbekistan boosted its own commitment to 0.41% of GDP, distancing Kazakhstan on 0.18%. Not to be outdone, Kazakhstan has vowed to raise its own research effort to 1% by 2015, according to the State Programme