ENVIRONMENT: Disease Flourishes around Shrinking Aral Sea

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Judith Perera and Andrei Ivanov

MOSCOW, Oct 19 1995 (IPS) - Officials in Moscow are continuing to deny that Russia is reconsidering an old project to divert water from Siberian rivers to the shrinking Aral Sea in central Asia, which recent reports say is in extreme danger of disappearing altogether.

The Aral’s water is being diverted to irrigate central Asia’s fields, which once produced more than 95 per cent of the Soviet Union’s cotton and one third of its rice. Experts say the ecological health of the sea was systematically sacrificed to reach and maintain these targets.

Now, 25 years after the draining began, the sea’s surrounding areas have into a salty, polluted desert.

And the issue has sparked a major diplomatic misunderstanding between Russian and Uzbek officials.

At a recent meeting in Nukus, Uzbekistan, chairman of Russia’s State Committee for Water Resources Nikolai Mikheyev was reported as saying Russia was willing to reconsider diversion of the rivers.

Islam Karimov, president of Uzbekistan — which has never stopped lobbying for the project — replied that if the scheme went ahead a statue would be erected in Nukus in honour of Mikheyev.

However, once back in Moscow Mikheyev insisted that he had been misquoted and had simply suggested that Russia may be willing to supply some drinking water to central Asia or perhaps equipment remaining from the diversion project.

The confusion is a reflection of the policy inertia which has afflicted all attempts to tackle the Aral problem since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Last year a joint team from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Bank identified a number of short-term projects that could help improve the ecological and health situation in the area.

The projects were proposed to the countries concerned — Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrghyzia and Russia — with the intention of securing an agreement before the World Bank tried to raise funds from its donors, but so far very little has been done.

UNEP had previously published a diagnostic study of the Aral which identified short-term, mid-term and long-term — 15-year — corrective measures, but again no progress was made, largely because of the different interests of the states involved.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union created regional tensions over the issue of water use and ownership. This is largely because the main headwaters of the Amudarya and Syrdarya — the two great rivers which feed the Aral Sea — originate within Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan, while most of the water is consumed in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.

The civil war in Tajikistan and the political instability in Kyrgyzstan have distanced these countries from the Aral Sea problem. In Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, however, food self-sufficiency is seen as the key to prosperity and each country is competing for the same scarce water supplies.

In March 1993 agreement was reached on the need for joint effort to improve the situation in the Aral Sea basin. A fund was set up requiring each country to contribute one per cent of their GNP. Subsequent meetings have reaffirmed this but so far very little money has been forthcoming.

Now the situation is becoming urgent and the damage may soon be irreversible, experts say.

With an area of 68,320 sq kms — including 2,230 sq. kms of islands — the Aral was once the fourth biggest lake in the world. Now it ranks sixth with a total surface area of 34,800 sq kms.

Since the 1960s it has lost over 70 per cent of its water, and its shores have receded 80 kms in some places. The sea used to receive 56 cu kms of water a year from the Amudarya, which springs from the Pamir mountains, and the Syrdarya, which arises in the Tienshen mountains.

But by the early 1980s this figure had fallen to 2 cu kms. Now, 27,000 sq kms of dried seabed produce dust storms which pick up toxic salt particles and deposit them thousands of kilometres away.

Some 15 storms a year drop 75 million tonnes of dust and salt on surrounding areas. About 150 million tonnes of dust is estimated to enter the atmosphere from the Aral seabed each year.

In the 1950s the Aral supported mixed agriculture and a flourishing fishing industry. But as the sea shrank salinity increased from 10 per cent to an average of 23 per cent, with some areas as high as 44 per cent. Twenty of the sea’s 24 fish species have disappeared completely.

The river delta areas were once fertile regions fringed with forest several kilometres wide and were home to 173 species of animals and abundant lakes full of fish. But by 1980 most of the lakes had vanished, the forest was less than a fifth of its previous size and all the marshland had disappeared.

Even the climate has been affected by the diversion process, resulting in hotter and drier summers and longer, colder winters. Humidity is down by 9 per cent.

The situation has been made worse by the huge amounts of pesticides, defoliants and fertilisers which are used in the cotton and rice fields and then drain back into the rivers, which are the main source of drinking water for 89 per cent of the population.

Infant mortality is 10 per cent and life expectancy low. There is a high rate of birth deformities and health officials say the genetic fund of the region has been damaged.

Sickness rates increase closer to the sea. Typhoid has increased 29-fold over the past 15 years and viral hepatitis sixfold. In some regions cancer of the oesophagus is rising at an alarming rate and is running at six times the national average. Stomach cancer and skin cancer are also increasing and liver cancer has doubled.

Meanwhile the Aral continues to shrink. If nothing is done it will have disappeared completely by 2010.

ENVIRONMENT: Disease Flourishes around Shrinking Aral Sea

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Judith Perera and Andrei Ivanov

MOSCOW, Oct 19 1995 (IPS) - Officials in Moscow are continuing to deny that Russia is reconsidering an old project to divert water from Siberian rivers to the shrinking Aral Sea in central Asia, which recent reports say is in extreme danger of disappearing altogether.
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