Sue Lloyd-Roberts and Ethirajan Anbarasan, correspondent with the BBC, London, and UNESCO Courier journalist respectively.
The Aral Sea
High and dry. Rusting fishing boats dot the desolate landscape at Moynaq (Uzbekistan), once a fishing port, now far away from the sea.
The Aral Sea region has one of the world’s highest rates of malformed or handicapped children.
Drinking water in the region contains four times more salt per litre than the limit recommended by the World Health Organization
At a children’s hospital in Nukus (Uzbekistan), a baby is treated for a serious pelvic malformation.
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FACTFILE Uzbekistan Source: World Bank statistics, 1999 |
With the prospects of saving the sea remote, experts and locals now seem to be turning their attention to relieving the social disaster
An ecological
disaster area, the shrinking Aral Sea generated a flood of assessment studies but
little follow-up. Humanitarian action is now an urgent priority.
“The
health of women of child-bearing age is steadily deteriorating because of the bad
quality of the drinking water. There are as many pregnancies as ever but the women
either miscarry or give birth to stillborn or handicapped babies. We have one of
the highest infant mortality rates in the world,” says the director of the maternity
hospital on the edge of the Aral Sea in the port city of Aralsk, in Kazakhstan.
Behind him, pregnant women lie on rows of hospital beds. They have been brought in
to ensure that they get clean food and water for at least the last trimester of their
pregnancies. The eyes of one woman betray terror. “This is my ninth pregnancy,” she
says, “I have yet to give birth to a live child and I am frightened.” Similar situations
exist elsewhere in this Central Asian region.
Man-made environmental
disasters
The worsening
health and environmental problems of people living in the Aral Sea basin, which consists
of parts of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, are
the direct consequences of man-made environmental disasters in the region–the shrinking
of the sea and pollution of the rivers which flow into it.
Experts say the disaster has left behind a 36,000-sq.km sea bed covered with accumulated
salts, which the wind carries away and deposits over thousands of square kilometres
of cultivated land. Pesticides and fertilizers have also found their way into water
and irrigation channels, poisoning food and drinking water affecting the lives of
about five million people.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, international donor agencies rushed
to the Central Asian region to assess the environmental impact of the shrinking of
the Aral Sea and to find ways of restoring it to its original level. Now, almost
a decade later, after countless studies and reports have been written, experts say
that restoration is impossible and efforts should now focus on avoiding a humanitarian
catastrophe.
Rescue missions
The Aral Sea,
covering an area the size of Lithuania, started receding in the 1960s after Soviet
state planners diverted its water sources, the Amu Dar’ya and the Syr Dar’ya rivers,
to irrigate cotton and other crops.
From 1960 to 1990, the area of irrigated land in Central Asia increased from 3.5
million hectares to 7.5 million. Cotton production soared, making the region the
world’s fourth largest producer. But by the 1980s the annual flow of fresh water
into the Aral was barely one-tenth of the 1950 supply. The salinity level increased,
destroying the sea’s flora and fauna. The fishing industry suffered; all but two
of the 30 species once found in the sea died out.
With no other means of water supply, the sea started to recede, eventually losing
half of its former area and a third of its volume. In 1989, it divided into a smaller
northern sea and a larger southern one. The two main fishing ports, Moynaq in Uzbekistan
and Aralsk in Kazakhstan were left high and dry, and fishing communities found themselves
100 kilometres or more away from the shore.
Today, drinking water in the region contains four times more salt per litre than
the limit recommended by the World Health Organization. This has caused increases
in kidney disease, diarrhoea and other serious ailments. Tuberculosis has reached
epidemic proportions. In some towns there are an estimated 400 cases out of a population
of 100,000.
The people of this once-fertile region have been calling for help since Soviet times,
but after their countries became independent at the end of 1991 their cries became
more urgent than ever. International agencies including the World Bank, the United
Nations Development Programme (UNDP), UNESCO, and the European Union rushed
to the region to offer help. Initiatives like the Aral Sea Basin Programme (ASBP),
the International Aral Sea Rehabilitation Fund (IFAS), and the Interstate Commission
for Water Co-ordination (ICWC) were launched to assess the problems and find solutions.
The activities they proposed brought high hopes to the people of the Aral Basin,
who thought their problems would eventually be solved.
So why after nearly a decade of rescue missions does the Aral Sea remain on the critical
list of world environmental catastrophes? According to experts, it is a classic case
of too many players entering too late, with too few resources but in many cases with
a huge stock of vested interests that are not necessarily consistent with environmental
protection.
The international aid agencies soon gauged the enormity of the problem and realized
that the funds allotted were not enough to rectify a disaster of this magnitude.
“Of course people here have been disappointed by the international community,” says
Antonius Lennarts of the World Bank, in Almaty (Kazakhstan). “There have been lots
of donor activity and promises but no follow-up, and long delays because of the huge
funds involved. The money available to solve a problem of this magnitude simply isn’t
available.”
In view of the gravity of the situation, the Nobel Prize-winning medical relief organization
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which is more usually associated with
the world’s hot spots, has launched an emergency programme to save the people of
Central Asia from what it calls in a recent report, “possibly the world’s greatest
environmental disaster and human tragedy.”
“To date,” the MSF report says, “millions of dollars worth of assessments have been
made of the Aral Sea region, resulting in very little direct humanitarian action
in the area.”
MSF has some justification for lamenting that so much has been spent in the last
eight years on talking about the Aral Sea and so little has actually been done. But
why has this happened? “It could be because the problem is just so huge and everyone
wants to help but many agencies just don’t know where to start,” explains Barbara
Britton of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the biggest
donor agency involved, in Tashkent.
There is another major hurdle as well as lack of funds–lack of co-ordination among
the five Aral basin nations. “They started competing with each other to get international
aid rather than co-operating in solving the problem,” says Professor J. A. Allan,
a water resources specialist at the University of London.
In the absence of the kind of federal authority that existed in Soviet times, the
five states set up the International Aral Sea Rehabilitation Fund (IFAS) in 1993
in order to co-ordinate water and agricultural projects. In 1995, their leaders attended
a UN-sponsored meeting in Nukus (Uzbekistan), which concluded with a resounding declaration
saying they would co-operate to resolve the human and environmental consequences
of the Aral Sea crisis. But, according to Britton, distrust between the states continued.
For example, when the Uzbekis were given the responsibility for water management,
they were accused of producing a programme that would irrigate Uzbekistan and not
other countries. Then the Uzbekis accused Kazakhstan of draining water away from
its southern neighbour by constructing a dam across the northern Aral Sea.
Anatoly Buranov, technical director of the Executive Committee of IFAS, admits that
the states could have done better. “Part of the problem is that we were all excited
by independence and after so many years of enforced togetherness we enjoyed the centrifugal
forces which the collapse of the Soviet Union allowed us. Now, however, we are realizing
the importance of co-operation.”
Ironically, the slow and delayed action from outsiders and their governments has
had a positive effect on one Aral basin country. Frustrated by years of unfulfilled
promises, the people of Kazakhstan raised an astonishing $2.5 million and built themselves
a sand dam 14 kilometres long and 30 metres wide, creating a lake in the northern
Aral Sea, close to Aralsk.
Kazakh officials say they also made efforts to draw less water from the Syr Dar’ya
than in the past and that the dam contained the increased inflow into the smaller,
northern Aral. As a result, the water level rose by three metres for the first time
in 30 years, bringing back greenery and birdlife to the desertified area.
As a result of increased inflow of fresh water the salinity level in the northern
Aral fell, reviving the hopes of the fishing industry. Above all, the dam brought
hope to the people of Aralsk, “a commodity which until recently has been as scarce
around here as water,” says Aitbai Kuserbaliv, the city’s mayor.
Unfortunately, Kuserbaliv explains, the dam keeps breaking as a result of rainfall
and increased inflow into the sea. In 1998, from three to five kilometres of the
dam were washed away and water flowed into the southern Aral. Officials say the project
cannot be sustained unless they get $15 million funding they have asked from the
World Bank to build a permanent structure. “I wrote to them several months ago and
they still have not got back to me,” says the mayor.
With the survival of the reclaimed sea, the efforts of dozens of dam builders and
the livelihoods of several hundred fishermen at stake, the World Bank seems likely
to come up with some funds. “We have agreed that it is a highly necessary dam and
the money will be forthcoming,” says Antonius Lennarts of the World Bank.
Even if the World Bank funds this project it will save only the smaller part of the
Aral Sea. To maintain the present water level of the bigger southern part, at least
20 cubic kilometres of water per year are required. Some grandiose schemes have been
proposed, including diverting waters from Siberian rivers or from the Caspian Sea,
over 2,400 km and 500 km away respectively, projects which could cost up to $8 billion
each. The Central Asian countries do not have the resources to embark on such costly
undertakings.
Another option would be to allow more water to flow into the Amu Dar’ya river, which
means that agricultural patterns in the region, especially in Uzbekistan, through
which most of the river flows, would need to be changed. This proposal could invite
stiff resistance from farmers in Uzbekistan who heavily depend on the river for irrigation.
“It is a very uneasy situation for them. You cannot stop agriculture. People would
lose their livelihood,” says Prof Janos Bogardi, senior water resources expert at
UNESCO.
The first priority:
saving people’s lives
There is no
doubt that it would take billions of dollars and decades to change the agricultural
pattern by introducing new technology and less water consuming plants. It is highly
unlikely that Uzbekistan, the second largest cotton exporter in the world, would
agree to shift from its prime cash crop.
With the prospects of saving the sea remote, experts and locals now seem to be turning
their attention to relieving the social disaster. If present conditions persist,
then the southern part of the Aral is likely to disappear in the next 25 years. The
priority should be saving the lives of the people, says Vefa Moustafaev, a UNESCO water resources expert.
After a decade of research and assessment reports, the international agencies have
now started implementing some of their projects to help the Aral basin population,
mainly by providing clean drinking water and better health care facilities. The World
Bank has financed a project to establish 25 stations to monitor drinking water quality
across the Central Asian region. The Bank also plans to fund projects to improve
agricultural practices which consume a lot of fresh water.
Experts say that the region may require an estimated $20 billion for much-needed
development and environmental activities, mainly to modernize agriculture, to reduce
river pollution and provide clean drinking water. At present, the cash-strapped Central
Asian countries are in no position to raise such funds on their own.
But the region is not without hope as far as its natural resources are concerned.
With their enormous gas and oil reserves the Central Asian states would be among
the major players in the global power sector in the coming years. However, it is
far from clear what the consequences of oil and gas exploitation would be for the
Aral Sea.
“There is still lots of hope in the region. But the countries need to co-ordinate
their efforts,” says Bogardi.