Continued from the previous page
But the Aral Sea paid the price for this success. As its volume precipitously dropped, the Aral's waters turned toxic for fish and wildlife - not to mention human - populations that depended on them. The soil around the sea has become more saline as well. In order to prepare fields for cultivation, which are mostly desert lands, farmers must first leach or rinse them, which brings salty minerals to the surface. Moreover, as a result of the increased soil salinity, cotton harvests began to diminish.
Aksoltan Ataeva, Turkmenistan's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, describes the sea change that took place. "The lake was used for fishing and we could see sailing and fishing boats", she says. "Now, we still can see them, but they are stuck in the sands."
Yusup Kamalov, standing in what 40 years ago was a deep seaport, heads the
Union for the Defense of the Aral Sea, a local non-governmental organization
based in Nukus.
Photo by Eric Hilger.
The United Nations has sought to address both the causes and the effects of the crisis in the Aral Sea basin, and primary among the approaches is water management. As long as humans have lived in Central Asia, dry air and water scarcity have been simple facts of life. Traditionally, mirabs, or water masters, controlled the water resources in Central Asia and ensured that water allocations corresponded to farmers' needs.
Reflected in a local proverb is the reverence with which water was once regarded: "In every drop of water there is a grain of gold." But under the Soviet system, water policies were driven by the goal of becoming "the largest producer of cotton" in the world, according to a 1997 World Bank study, "without considering issues of equity and the people's needs".
By installing a centralized bureaucracy in Moscow, the Soviet Union successfully broke the power of the mirabs in the region. But, at the same time, it suppressed a sense of accountability for water use at the local level. As a result, farmers developed wasteful practices which became entrenched throughout the region. Irrigation canals were rarely lined or covered, leading to massive water loss through evaporation and filtration. Turkmenistan's Kara Kum Canal, for example, flows for 1,200 kilometers over loose sands. Overall, irrigation efficiency is estimated to be no more than 40 to 50 per cent, according to a 1995 UNDP background report. Moreover, upstream farmers commonly allowed fertilizer run-off into the rivers with little thought or understanding as to its effects on their downstream neighbours. And instead of nurturing depleted soil back to life with crop rotation, they simply moved on to vacant, however marginal, lands.
These patterns, followed by thousands of farmers over nearly three decades, culminated in the full-blown environmental catastrophe that today affects the entire Aral Sea basin.
Soviet scientists understood that the massive water withdrawals needed to sustain their cotton "king" would cause the Aral Sea level to plummet, but they believed that a hard crust would form over the exposed seabed salts and minimize health and environmental fallout.
They were wrong. In fact, toxic salts and minerals, including sodium chloride, sodium sulfate and magnesium chloride, now constitute the greatest danger from the Aral Sea catastrophe. Because of air blown salts, Mrs. Ataeva stresses, "the zone of the Aral tragedy became larger". Toxic salts now rain down hundreds of kilometres from the Aral's basin, damaging crops and people's health in an increasing circumference. They have been found as far as 1,000 kilometres away in the fertile Ferghana valley, in Georgia, and even along the Arctic shore of the former Soviet Union, according to Philip P. Micklin, a leading expert on the situation, in his 1988 essay, "Desiccation of the Aral Sea: A Water Management Disaster in the Soviet Union".
The lands have turned into salt plains, presaging the coming desert. "Satellite imagery and photography from manned spacecraft indicate that desert is spreading rapidly" in the area, he says. Since that time, Aral Sea salt has been discovered in the Himalayan peaks and in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, according to a 1995 UNDP report, and the desertified bed of the Aral Sea continues to threaten farms and homes in the region.
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Number 1 1999
