The death of the Aral Sea

[Cd.]

http://www.lbs.msu.edu/scarce/LBS334...aia_paper.html

I first read about the plight of the Aral Sea in national geographics about 10 years ago. This once prosporous inland sea supported a large population and had a thriving fishing industry. The Soviet attempt to build a large cotton industry diverted water for irrigation causing water levels to shrink and as a result the lake is now incapible of supporting marine life due to a high salinity content and severe pollution due to the runoff of fertilizers. Worst of all, population centers surrounding the lake have suffered due to dust and lack of water. Today thousands are dying of cancer due to the toxic dust from the dry lake bed. This is a story that everyone should read. Its a warning of what can happen if we try to manipulate the environment. The earth does not get mad.... it gets even!

Disappearing Act: The Aral Sea Disaster
Julia Letoutchaia

A theme running throughout the history of many civilizations is the human determination to tame nature, and specifically to tame water. Human beings build dams, divert rivers, and create large irrigation systems. People insist on living and farming in areas where the annual rainfall barely supports the local cacti. Grandiose plans to settle as much of the planet’s surface as possible, regardless of whether the area can be sustainably settled, has in some areas, such as the state of California, brought about great economic prosperity, and agricultural industries rivaling those in unirrigated areas (Reisner, 1993). However, there have been numerous failures and outright disasters in the quest to dominate nature. One such disaster is the Aral Sea in the former Soviet Union.

Once the world’s fourth largest lake, the Aral Sea has dropped in area by 40 percent (Mickin, 1988). Salinity levels have greatly increased. It is unlikely the lake will ever again reach its previous levels. Furthermore, a number of social and economic problems arose due to the lack of water that is safe to irrigate with or drink and the decimation of the fishing industry. The cause of this is a reckless attempt by the Soviet government to tame the desert and turn it into a cotton-producing paradise. Cotton, the “white gold” (Agarwal, 1996:6), was a crop of great interest to Soviet planners, and “national cotton self-sufficiency” was an important part of national policy in the 1950s (Aral Sea Crisis, 1992).

Furthermore, Central Asia experienced the most rapid population growth in the USSR (McCreery, 1994:44), and some type of large scale industry was needed to support this population. Central Asia was the best region in the USSR to grow cotton, since the temperatures there suited heat-loving crops such as grain, corn, rice, soy, and cotton (McCreery, 1994:45). However, it was still necessary to provide water for these crops. The major water resources in the area are the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers, which feed the Aral Sea, as well as a few small lakes (McCreery, 1994:46). The Soviet irrigation scheme, planned in the 1950s and 1960s, consisted of diverting the waters of these rivers. The planners knew that this would significantly diminish the supply of water replenishing the Aral Sea from evaporative losses, but did not see this as a major concern. The planning experts based their asessment on a simple comparison of economic advantage of a liter of Aral Sea water vs. a liter of irrigation water. A few scientists warned of detrimental effects from dessication of the Aral Sea, but their warnings were ignored. “Indeed, the ultimate shrinkage of the Aral to a residual brine lake as all its inflow was devoted to agriculture and other economic needs was viewed as both desirable and inevitable” (Mickin, 1988).

Thus, the irrigation project was built without any system of maintaining the water balance. Furthermore, the irrigation system was inefficient at best and hugely wasteful at worst. Huge volumes of water were used to saturate the arid soil of the steppe regions along the Syr Darya. Surface runoff from the irrigation flowed into the desert or accumulated in natural depressions and evaporated without being returned to rivers. Additional water was needed to flush the porous soil in order to counteract secondary salinization which resulted from capillary action and evaptranspiration induced by farming on arid soil (McCreery, 1994:49). Water consumption per irrigated hectare was significantly larger than in other irrigated areas, and much of this consumtion was unnecessary. By some estimates, irrigational water use rate in Uzbekistan exceeded the necessary amount by 160 percent, by 170 percent in Turkmenistan, and by 20 percent in Kazakhstan (Aral Sea Crisis, 1992). The result was a massive redistribution of salt within the soil of the region. An estimated 60-70 million tons of salt were annually redistributed from irrigated lands across the region (McCreery, 1994:50). The most dramatic result of all this was, of course, the decline of the Aral sea, as the flow of water into it decreased to almost nothing.

The Aral’s dessication has had a devastating effect on the environment. The Aral Sea is a salt-water lake; thus, as it evaporated, it left behind massive salt deposits on its former bottom. The land that was formerly under the lake is essentially poisoned with salt and mineral deposits, resistant to any vegetation. Furthermore, winds blow salt and dust from this land to great distances, contaminating land as far away as the Black Sea coast and the Arctic shore, and simply poisoning the surrounding basin. The increased concentration of salt in the lake has been devastating to the lake’s ecosystem, and 20 of
24 native fish species have been killed off, decimating the local fishing industry.

Processing plants that once stood on the shore of the lake, are now many miles inland, cut off from their source of livelihood. In the 1980s, the processing plants were kept in business by the Soviet government’s policy of shipping fish to the region from as far away as the Baltic. The lake’s diminishing size also has decreased its influence on the local climate, reducing the growing season. The groundwater levels have also dropped, due to a reduction in pressure and flow of artesian wells, resulting in degradation of natural plant communities. The salinization and pollution of water resources in the basin has caused a drastic decline in the quality of drinking water, which in turn has caused a large increase in a number of diseases, cancers, and infant mortality (Mickin, 1988).

Drinking water in the region contains four times more salt than the limit recommended by the World Health Organization (The Aral Sea, n.d.). None of these consequences of desertification were unpredictable. If the government had listened to the advice of trained scientists, rather than following its grandiose goals of taming the desert, this disaster would have been averted.
Aside from proposing drastic measures, such as diverting Siberian rivers to the Aral sea basin, little had been done by the Soviet government about this disaster. The region is an environmental and social disaster area, and the Aral is likely to dissapear almost completely within the next ten or twenty years. Since the breakup of the USSR, no central authority governs all the republics in the region. Lack of funding is a large issue as well as lack of a concrete solution to the problem. A number of international agencies rushed to help with a number of initiatives, all of which brought hope but few results to the region, in a typical case of too many people entering too late with their own vested interest. Also, there is little cooperation among the former republics that compete for funds to solve a problem that affects them all (The Aral Sea, n.d.).

The frustration with inaction has brought about some positive results. The people of Kazakhstan raised money and built a sand dam, creating a lake in the northern Aral Sea. Officials have made efforts to draw less water from the Syr Darya, and used the dam to contain flow to the northern Aral, the smaller of the two lakes formed by the dessication of the Aral. As a result, the water level rose by three meters for the first time in 30 years, bringing back not only some wildlife, but also hope, a “commodity as scarce as water” (The Aral Sea, n.d.). Unfortunately, the dam regularly breaks, and without additional funding, a permanent structure cannot be built. Also, it is only a small effort.

Vast reform of agricultural methods in the area is necessary. According to various experts, $20 billion is needed for development and environmental cleanup activities (The Aral Sea, n.d.). While there is hope for the region, little hope remains for the Aral Sea itself. Fully restoring the ecosystem and the lake is now ecologically impossible (Agarwal, 1996:6).
The Aral Sea is one of the greatest environmental disasters in history. Similar things have happened in the United States, on a smaller scale. Streams flowing into Mono Lake in California have been diverted for irrigation purposes, causing the lake’s
levels to drop dramatically (Reisner, 1993:513). Teton dam, a water project almost as misguided as the Aral Basin irrigation system, was built. This dam was built on brittle volcanic rock replete with giant fissures, despite warnings from geologists. Predictably, the dam broke, and flooded a number of towns in its path, killing eleven people, and causing $2 billion in damages (Reisner, 1993:407). The disaster could have been predicted very easily; yet congressmen and Bureau of Reclamation officials chose to indulge their own special interests over listening to reason. Unless human beings learn that nature cannot be bent to their will no matter what, and that consequences of dramatically restructuring the landscape cannot be ignored, these disasters will continue to destroy the environment, as well as human lives.

[Marty-Mar]

That's a really sad story. It's a shame that such human greed and lack of cooperation can cause such a prologated disaster.

[Shogun]

Originally posted by Criminal


Thus, the irrigation project was built without any system of maintaining the water balance. Furthermore, the irrigation system was inefficient at best and hugely wasteful at worst. Huge volumes of water were used to saturate the arid soil of the steppe regions along the Syr Darya. Surface runoff from the irrigation flowed into the desert or accumulated in natural depressions and evaporated without being returned to rivers. Additional water was needed to flush the porous soil in order to counteract secondary salinization which resulted from capillary action and evaptranspiration induced by farming on arid soil (McCreery, 1994:49

restructuring the landscape cannot be ignored, these disasters will continue to destroy the environment, as well as human lives.

These men were thinking of the almighty dollar and should have thought of the reprecutions. Now it seems that what they thought was going to help them is actually killing them(literally). What a waste. And the sad thing is that a similar thing is happening in the rain forrests.

[Cd.]

Originally posted by Shogun


These men were thinking of the almighty dollar and should have thought of the reprecutions. Now it seems that what they thought was going to help them is actually killing them(literally). What a waste. And the sad thing is that a similar thing is happening in the rain forrests.

What is really sad is that the people who were most affected by this had no say in the matter. In the Soviet Union the party commisars were the ones who profitted from this. They than wore the acheivements on their sleaves. There was actually a scandel in Uzbekastan with a number of party officials growing rich from the developement of the cotton industry. One of them was the son of Leonoid Brezhnev.