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• W15831046 abstract "Mirroring the graveyard of ships littering the bed of the ever-shrinking Aral Sea, a similar graveyard of international assistance projects mars the landscape--projects that failed, were discontinued or never even begun. ********** Before the events of 11 September 2001 and the war in Afghanistan brought Central Asia to geopolitical prominence, the region carried the unfortunate distinction as home to arguably the world's worst environmental disaster. (1) With its exceptionally high salt content, the Aral Sea is an official biological dead zone. Its shores are shrinking, and its water is unfit for aquatic life. The climate in the region has also been affected, as summers are hotter and drier. Consequently, the amount of dust has increased, possibly triggering respiratory illness among the area's five million inhabitants. Years of excessive agricultural chemical usage also draw concerns about human health. Not surprisingly, this ecological disaster continues to place a strain on the region's capacity to flourish. For those living in the affected zone, the issue of the Aral Sea is nothing less than one of survival. (2) The disaster can be traced back to Cold War politics. In the 1950s, the world's main cotton producers were China and the United States. With more than three million of its soldiers in need of uniforms, however, the Soviets wanted to gain access to some of the wealth from cotton production. For them, self-sufficiency in cotton was a strategic, military necessity. Central Asia, with its warm climate and large, exploitable population, was the ideal location to grow what the Soviets called white gold. Indeed, the only input that needed to be developed was a massive irrigation scheme. The great rivers of Central Asia, the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya, proved to be excellent sources for filling the expanding network of irrigation canals, and in turn, the fields of cotton. In 1960, 4.5 million hectares of land in Central Asia were under irrigation for the project. By 1992, the figure had grown to 18.5 acres, and new lands continue to be brought on board to this day. This land, however, is fed largely by unlined and uncovered systems, rendering them both inefficient and ineffective. In 1980 irrigation accounted for 84 percent of all water withdrawals from the Amu Darya and Syr Darya. Of that, 62 percent was lost to evaporation and seepage into the water table, allowing only 38 percent of the water to return to the rivers. (3) By the mid-1980s, this mismanagement of vital water resources to create a cotton monoculture, combined with rice cultivation in areas that should never have been used for rice growing and the profligate use of agricultural chemicals, came back to haunt the people of the Aral Sea area. (4) Indeed, the continuation of these agricultural practices by the region's current governments has affected every aspect of Central Asian society: its poor economic performance, the poor health of its people and the destruction of its culture. The overall quality of the environment can all be in part traced to decades of poor agricultural practices. (5) It is said that for every action, there is a reaction. In the case of the desiccation of the Aral Sea, the reaction is multifaceted. Prior to 1980 the Aral Sea was the world's fourth largest in-land body of water. As a terminal lake, its only sources of water were the two rivers that the Soviet Union diverted for irrigation. Once slightly brackish, without a significant inflow of water, the sea now has a salt content of 75 grams of salt per liter, roughly two times greater than the world's oceans. As a result, it was pronounced biologically dead by the World Bank in 1997 and now ranks as the world's 10th largest in-land body of water, falling so fast map-makers cannot keep up. Communities that once relied on its abundant fish stocks for local consumption and trade now find themselves more than 100 kilometers from the shoreline. …" @default.
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• W15831046 date "2003-03-22" @default.
• W15831046 modified "2023-09-23" @default.
• W15831046 title "The Aral Sea Disaster and the Disaster of International Assistance. (Pressing Issues)" @default.
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