RA Deputy Prime Minister: Climate change threatens Lake Sevan

ArmInfo. Climate change threatens Lake Sevan, Armenian Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Avinyan said at a conference on investing in a "climate economy" and energy  efficiency in the context of implementing sustainable development  goals.

According to RIA Novosti, the event was held on the margins of the  High Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development. 

According to Avinyan, climate change affects the landscape of Armenia  radically. "The most affected part of climate change is Lake Sevan.  Rising temperatures created a situation where we have the prospect of  losing a lake as a lake," Avinyan said.

As the Deputy Prime Minister pointed out, at the moment the Armenian  authorities are working on finding ways to solve this problem. "And  first of all we are trying to raise the water level in the lake -  about 6 meters, which means that we need more water in the lake," he  said.

Due to this, according to him, the level of cold water will be lower,  which will allow to keep Sevan as a lake at least in the near future.  "We sense a change in temperature, it senses both flora and fauna,"  he added. "I think that in Armenia people did not think about climate  change for a long time until it hit the very heart of the country.  Now we understand that these are very serious issues. Environmental  problems, unfortunately, have an irreversible effect. Therefore, we  pay a lot of attention to these issues now ", - stressed Avinyan.   The Commission on Sevan Issues under the President of Armenia  previously reported that the water level in the lake is planned to be  increased by six meters by 2030, which will allow increasing the  volume of water in Sevan to 42 billion cubic meters. This indicator  is a strategic resource.

Lake Sevan is the main source of drinking water in the region, one of  the largest alpine lakes in Europe and Asia, located in the heart of  the Armenian Highlands at an altitude of 1914 meters. In length, from  the northwest to the southeast, the lake stretches over 70  kilometers, and its water surface reaches almost 1,5 thousand square  kilometers. The only source originating from the lake is the Hrazdan  River (a tributary of the Araks), with 28 rivers flowing into it, the  total basin area of which is 2.776 square kilometers.