The International

In early April 2010, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, looking out over a desert that had once been the shore of a vibrant lake teeming with life, described the retreat of the Aral Sea as “One of the planet’s worst environmental disasters.” On his swing tour through former Soviet Central Asia, Ki-Moon touched down in the Uzbek town of Muynak after touring the region by helicopter. Muynak, a city in the province of Karakalpakstan, used to be a healthy fishing port of tens of thousands but is now the epicentre of an environmental and health disaster. The Aral Sea is now over 150 km from the derelict pier at Muynak and standing on it, staring across what was once the sea bed, Ki-Moon said, “I wasn’t seeing anything; I could see only a graveyard of ships.”

The Aral was once the fourth largest inland body of water in the world, covering 68,000 sq km and surpassed only by the Caspian Sea, Lake Superior and Lake Victoria, and was home to dozens of varieties of marine life making it a key resource in the Soviet Union. However, in the 1960s, Soviet economic planners decided that much of Central Asia should be given over entirely to the production of cotton in an effort to out produce the United States. Thousands of hectares of land were planted with cotton but to achieve this monumental project, the Soviet Union dammed and redirected the two major rivers that feed the Aral. The Syr Darya and the Amu Darya, which are fed by snowfields and high glaciers in the Hindu Kush, Pamir and Tien Shan mountain ranges, now only trickle into the sea as their water is used to feed cotton, one of the world thirstiest crops. As a result the Aral Sea has lost 75 per cent of its surface, causing the sea to break up into a smaller northern section near Kazakhstan and a larger but drier southern section near Uzbekistan. How has the retreat of the Aral Sea affected the region that once relied on it so much? Why are efforts to refill the sea proceeding so slowly? Is it possible to save the Aral Sea and those in its vicinity?

As water retreats health deteriorates

As less and less fresh water from the mountains flowed into the salty Aral, the percentage of salt in the water has increased from 1 to 3 per cent. And as the sea retreats it has left behind a salt desert that locals call the Akkumy or white sands. This salt is then picked up and blown across Central Asia by frequent dust storms that carry it as far as Scandinavia and Japan. The bed of the Aral Sea has also been contaminated by chemicals ejected by industrial plants that used to sit on its shores and more sinister biological agents from Soviet weapons tests on Vozrozhdeniye Island. Over 43 million tons of toxic salt are lifted off the dry seabed every year. In Karakalpakstan the storms are made up heavily of sodium chloride and sodium sulphate, which are highly toxic and, apart from being the primary cause of ballooning respiratory and eye diseases, poisons the soil where local farms grow cotton and wheat. Farmers who have lived their whole lives in Karakalpakstan now face a struggle to feed their families or to gain income through cotton production, as agriculture in the region has dropped between 30 and 50 per cent. “When you see this salt, sad, dark thoughts take you,” one farmer, who asked specifically not to be named as the Uzbek government frowns on speaking to journalists, told the New York Times in 2008. “Nothing grows on salty land. It’s like standing on a graveyard.”

Flushing the salt and toxins out of the fields requires an enormous amount of water; however, water is actually in short supply in the towns and cities of northern Karakalpakstan. The Kum Kanal, the centerpiece of the massive Soviet irrigation network in Uzbekistan, lacks a concrete lining down its 1,300 km length as do its 60 diversion canals. In turn the network loses almost 20 km of water every year. The quality of the water from the rivers has also dropped significantly and is now not even safe to drink according to reports by the World Health Organization (WHO) and Medecins Sans Frontiers (MSF). After the Soviet Union inaugurated the planting of cotton in the region in the 1960s, a huge amount of pesticides such as DDT and lindane were dumped on the fields. “Over these villages drowning in cotton, planes and helicopters flew, dumping on them avalanches of artificial fertilizers, clouds of poisonous pesticides. People choked; they had nothing to breathe, went blind,” Muynak resident Ryszard Kapuscinski told MSF. Many of these pesticides are still used today. This is joined by a huge amount of agricultural runoff that fills the canals and then enters the drinking water. According to MSF, if one adds milk to one’s tea in Muynak it curdles instantly due to salt and chemicals.

The combination of the collapse of local farming and fishing industries, as well as toxins in the air and drinking water, has made Karakalpakstan an area of numerous health problems. Tuberculosis rates, known in the region as the “white death,” are among the highest in the world. In just one year between 2000 and 2001, MSF reported that the number of TB patients in Muynak increased by 70 per cent and 13 per cent of cases are drug resistant. The region also exhibits extremely high levels of anaemia, tuberculosis, kidney and liver diseases, respiratory infections, allergies, and cancer. However, the most shocking health problems are amongst pregnant women and children. Dr. Oral A. Ataniyazova of the Karakalpak Center for Reproductive Health in her 2003 report for the World Water Forum found that 99 per cent of pregnant women and 87 per cent of newborns in the region have anaemia, and that one in every twenty newborns suffers from abnormalities, fives times the level found in Europe. The cause of this is not in doubt, according to Ataniyazova, as there are high levels of pesticides present in maternal plasma.

In the Aral basin the problems of water and health are inextricably linked. There is a saying in Central Asia: “Where there is no water, there is no life.”

All talk but no action

The major problem facing the retreat of the Aral Sea is the failure of regional states to discuss water cooperation that could aid in its restoration. During Ban Ki-Moon’s trip to the region, the Secretary-General highlighted the lack of coordinated efforts by the Central Asian states to reverse the damage done during the Soviet era. The Syr Darya, which feeds into the northern part of the sea, originates in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan, flows into eastern Uzbekistan, crosses into the mountains of Tajikistan, and then flows into Uzbekistan again before finally reaching Kazakhstan and the Aral Sea. Ultimately, issues of supply and use of water are the cause of constant disagreements and recriminations between the Central Asians. The largest problem, as concerns refilling the Aral Sea, revolves around the use of water for hydro-electric and agricultural projects. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, both mountainous states with few energy reserves, are busy building new dams on the Amu and Syr Darya that will provide energy in the winter months. Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan charge that these will affect the amount of water available downstream for their agricultural irrigation. A 2009 meeting of the Central Asian states to try and discuss new projects for refilling the Aral Sea broke up in disagreement over this issue. Clearly a lack of regional cooperation is harming efforts to save the sea.

Muhammed Tahir of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins University agrees with the UN Secretary-General, writing in 2006 that “Lack of cooperation and coordination on water management issues continues to create unprecedented potential risks for the future of the region.” He points out that Uzbekistan, and to a lesser extent Turkmenistan, are busy expanding their agricultural projects that feed from the Amu Darya in the south. The Turkmen “Golden Century Lake Project,” which plans to create a 150 km lake as a water reserve by tapping the Amu Darya, was begun in 2000 without regional consultations. Tahir says that this is merely exacerbating the environmental and health problems that were already in place from the Soviet era. However, agriculture can not be solely to blame for the continuing desiccation of the Aral. Tahir pointed out that the projected Tajik dam on the Amu Darya would be a disaster for the Aral Sea as well as regional agriculture, as it would deprive it of yet more water. “If a second project under development in Tajikistan — the Rogun Dam — is realized, it will spell disaster not only for the Aral Sea but for the agricultural sector of the entire region, as it gives full control of the Amu Darya to Tajikistan.”

Erica Marat, Tahir’s colleague at the Central Asia-Caucasus institute, agrees the blame should fall equally on several Central Asian states, especially Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, for their inability to see the bigger, trans-national picture. Writing in 2008, Marat claimed that hardline positions by both governments was hampering efforts to come to an agreement over water sharing in the Syr Darya basin. As Kyrgyzstan is jealously guarding the head waters of the river for itself and refuses to recognize the trans-national status of the river, Uzbekistan refused to even attend the first round of talks in 2008 on regional water cooperation.

Ed Ring of Eco World Journal disagrees, arguing that the fault lies mainly with the countries using the rivers for agricultural production. He claims if the water was not used to irrigate the crops in the Aral basin then the flow of water that currently reaches the Aral could increase from 3 km of water a year to 6 km. He argues that for the paltry sum of $30 million the entire crop of rice and cotton that grows in the salinated fields of Karakalpakstan could be bought out annually, meaning the Syr Darya’s water could be used entirely to feed and restore the Aral Sea. Writing on Eco World’s website about the region’s farmers, he states, “They could sit out the summer with their harvest money already in hand, no need to sow the seeds, no need to watch over the fields, or to harvest, or to water.” In turn this would mean less pesticides and agricultural runoff in the water and the disappearance of the salt desert. However, Uzbekistan remains the world’s second largest cotton exporter after the United States, and a request for it to give up production in one of its key regions simply for the health of its farmers would undoubtedly be rejected.

New massive works projects?

Ironically, the two most prominent solutions being touted to save the Aral and restore water, health and employment to the people in its vicinity bear a striking resemblance to the old Soviet projects that created the problem. Kazakhstan announced in July 2008 that its $260 million plan to save the north Aral Sea is having significant success. The 13 km long Kok-Aral dam that separates the Kazakh north Aral Sea from the much drier and saltier Uzbek south Aral Sea means the reduced flow of water from the Syr Darya now need only fill a basin a quarter of the size of the original sea. This much smaller sea’s depth had increased 30 meters by 2008 when the last readings were taken. Fish stocks have started to return and fishermen in the Kazakh town of Aralsk can once again launch their boats. “The return of the North Aral Sea shows that man-made disasters can be at least partly reversed,” said World Bank President Robert Zoellick, who helped fund the project, in 2008.

Further south the Uzbek Aral continues to remain dry and a source of constant health risks. In the short term, the Uzbek government could encourage the planting of saxaul, which the World Bank is promoting in its campaign in Kazakhstan. Saxaul, a plant native to Central Asia, can reach heights of 10 meters and its thick bark holds water like a sponge, which can then be squeezed to release it and provide for people or animals. The plant is also able to protect people, buildings and livestock from the salt winds due to its height. Its sturdy body also means it can prevent land erosion and movement.

However, Ed Ring points out that while such plans are good, “Conservation is only part of the problem.” Somehow the sea must be restored. One of the more radical suggestions that was proposed in Soviet times, but is now again under discussion, is to divert two of Russia’s largest rivers south to the Aral Sea. The Volga and the Ob-Irtysh rivers in Central Russia are both far larger than the Amu and Syr Darya and both serve regions with an over abundance of water. If they were tapped for 10 per cent of their flow and canals built to take this extra water south, they could provide an extra 60 km of water to the Aral annually. Though in recent years prominent regional politicians such as Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev have voiced support for the plan. Yet at an estimated cost of $28 billion, who will step forward to fund it?

Meanwhile, the desert of salt around Muynak continues to grow and the storms that carry the dust across the land continue to blow affecting the health of residents. Soviet propaganda used to say that the irrigation project meant that the water would come back to Muynak every 10 years. When this did not happen it changed to 20 years. Now the Uzbek government says ever 40 years. Speaking in front of a MSF official in 2003, Pjotr Ivanisovich, manager of Muynak’s Russian Cultural Center, assured an elderly resident, “Soon the water will be back.” Seven years on, that remains to be seen.