Water Unites

i From the Aral Sea to the Aralkum:
The Aral Sea catastrophe
1960
During its best days, the state fish factory in the harbour town
Muynak at the Uzbek southern shore of the Aral Sea delivered
22 million cans of fish each year to the rest of the Soviet
Union. Today, the view from the pier is of desert, rusting ships
and camels. The Aral Sea has developed into the «Aralkum»,
the Aral desert. Once the fourth-largest body of water in
the world, it has shrunk more than 80% from 68 800 km² to
13 500 km² since 1960, while volume has decreased by 90%. It
has split up into three lakes: a northern part, fed by the Syr
Darya, a deep, moon crescent-shaped southwestern part and
a shallow southeastern part that sometimes entirely disappears.
The southern parts were once fed by the Amu Darya,
but no significant amounts of water from it have reached the
sea for years. The water in salinity level exceeded 75 g per litre
in the southwestern part of the Southern Aral and 150 g/l in
the southeastern part, which is more than five times as much
as in the Dead Sea. 8 Only tiny brine shrimp survive in it.
The consequences of the desiccation have been catastrophic:
plants, animals and fish have disappeared. The unique
ecosystem of a large lake in the middle of a desert was destroyed.
Respiratory diseases, typhus, hepatitis and anaemia
spread and the infant mortality rate is one of the highest in the
world. The fish industry, which once produced 50 000 tonnes
a year, collapsed, and 60 000 people who depended on it lost
their jobs. The frequency of dust storms increased, blowing
salt and polluted seabed particles hundreds of kilometres
away. An important element in mitigating the continental
climate in Central Asia disappeared, worsening the climate
in the whole region: winters became colder, summers hotter.
Which factors led to this disaster? The main reasons
were the expansion of irrigation agriculture to increase cotton
production in order to establish the Soviet Union on the
world market and to develop a region with a fast-growing
population. Between the first Russian census in 1897 and
the last Soviet census in 1989, the population almost quintupled
from 10.5 million to 49.5 million, due both to high
birth rates and migration and deportations from other parts
1965
1970
1975
1980
8 Cawater-info.net; Aladin 2005.
20 Water usage and water management in the Soviet Union