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Abstract

This paper examines Lake Balkhash within the Ili–Balkhash basin as a hydrosocial system shaped by intersecting histories of Soviet colonial industrialization, post-independence extractive processes and ongoing climate pressures. It approaches the lake as a relational environment where water, memory, and power are continuously reconfigured through infrastructural interventions, ecological change, and everyday practices. The concept of hydrocosmology is developed to foreground water as a carrier of cultural knowledge and relational practices, drawing on nomadic epistemologies, embodied observation, and oral traditions that remain embedded in the steppe and lake environments.

Drawing on the long-term initiative Care for Balkhash, the paper explores how care operates as an infrastructural practice that reconnects fragmented hydrocommunities and enables forms of translation between local knowledge and institutional governance. Through artistic research, public forums, and interdisciplinary collaboration, the initiative situates cultural practice within hydrosocial processes and environmental decision-making. By situating Balkhash within interconnected atmospheric, glacial, and riverine cycles, the paper articulates how planetary interdependence can be understood through a specific watershed and proposes hydrocosmology as a framework for engaging ecological crisis through relational responsibility.