She’s Salty: The Aral Sea, A Case of Bad Romance Between Man and Nature

Aralkum
“The color of the water was shocking blue, really blue. Like the sky,” an aged Kazakh man reminisces, mentally replenishing the waters of the Aral Sea as his eyes scour the desolation. Once the fourth largest inland body of fresh water on the planet, the Aral Sea was resplendent with natural beauty, endemic species, and human flourishing—a drop of life in the mostly arid and uninhabited steppes of Central Asia. It was an emblem of progress. Soviet films of worker activity in the Aral Sea show a bustling fishing industry, epitomizing the cheerful collective conquest of nature.
Those idyllic days have turned to dust. The hubris of Soviet central planning eventually culminated in ecological disaster. In order to increase cotton production, Khrushchev’s Soviet Union rerouted the waters of the Syr Darya and Amu Darya, the rivers that feed the Aral, into irrigation, thus dramatically expanding the arable land in the region. Inevitably, with its water source cut off, the Aral Sea lost substantial volume over several decades, and by the time a solution was being organized, the Soviet Union collapsed, preventing a more timely response. Chronic disorganization, mismanagement, and inefficiency rendered the newly independent states impotent. As a result, the Aral Sea has been reduced to approximately five percent of its original surface area, and the entire southeast portion has disappeared. It is now called Aralkum—the Aral desert.
What was then a release from the summer heat and a source of economic livelihood for thousands is now a listless graveyard of fishing boat carcasses, bleached, rusted, and stripped away for scrap metal. The surrounding area has become disease ridden and impoverished. Furthermore, the desertification of the lake may have a disastrous ripple effect on the entire region. This tragedy has been “one of the planet’s worst natural disasters,” but that statement almost fails to capture the scale of human suffering it has yet to beget. It also fails to capture the fact that this was a manmade disaster—one that could have been avoided with an eye to long-term resource management.
Saline Miasma
The fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides used during the Central Asian agricultural explosion, as well as the residual waste of Soviet weapons testing on the islands of the lake, accumulated in the terminal seabed as toxic dust, which is regularly kicked up by winds and spread across the region. As a result, fauna in the area has suffered. A Kazakh man explained the resulting health problem to a BBC reporter: “The disease was called ‘soleny’ or ‘salty’ because the grass was full of salt. [After eating] their heads ached, they became dizzy. They would hit their head against the earth and die. I have lost 15 or 16 of my camels.” Several once endemic species have become endangered or extinct. But the dust has affected more than just regional fauna, as strong Siberian winds have sent the chemical concoction of the Aralkum far and wide, even as far as the Antarctic. It has been found in the blood of penguins.
The more tragic immediate consequence though is the impact of these toxins on the human populations closest to the dry seabed, who now suffer from an panoply of illnesses. Anemia is widespread: In the 1980s the rate of the disease was approximately 17 percent in Karakalpakstan, the semiautonomous region of Uzbekistan abutting the Aral Sea. 20 years later, about 99 percent of pregnant women had anemia, and 70 percent suffered from severe anemia by the third trimester. Anemia, a condition caused by an insufficient amount of red blood cells or hemoglobin, can be a significant risk factor for weak immune systems and brain damage if untreated during pregnancy and infancy. Infertility, miscarriages, and birth abnormalities have increased in conjunction with a higher prevalence of tuberculosis, kidney and liver diseases, respiratory infections, allergies, and cancer. The degradation of health has been exacerbated by the breakdown of the health care system with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the widespread unemployment and poverty corresponding to the economic decline in the region. The local life expectancy is only 51.


Ripples
But the worst is perhaps yet to come. One of the Aral Sea’s most important functions was the regulation of the regional climate. It mitigated cold northern winds and reduced summer heat, thus preventing the region from becoming a desert. However, with the Aral now a fraction of its former size, the winters have gotten longer and colder, and the summers have gotten shorter and dryer, thereby heating and drying the area,  Researchers have noted an astoundingly high rate of glacier retreat in the Tien Shan mountains to the east. The glaciers have lost a quarter of their total volume over five decades, a rate far above the international average. The meltwater from these glaciers are the crucial water source of the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya, which are not only the lifelines of the Aral, but also support the water infrastructure of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
Though it is difficult to track the exact short-term effects, some experts agree that in the long term, the flows of the rivers will decrease. They estimate a seven to 15 percent reduction in the flow of the Amu Darya and a  five percent reduction in the flow of the Syr Darya by 2050. Several smaller tributaries may dry up over the decades. The most dire estimate comes from Stratfor researcher Peter Zeihan, who estimates that the rivers will completely dry up by 2025. In any case, the decrease in river flow will complicate the revival of the Aral, which the Kazakh government has been undertaking over the past decade through damming projects. If the Aral, as well as the regional agriculture, is to survive, highly efficient coordination is needed among Central Asian countries and the international community, but that may be too much to ask.
(Former) Family Foolishness and Fury  
The infrastructure and dynamics of water supply and consumption in the region are complex and frustrating. Though Central Asia does not suffer from water scarcity according to statistics, a significant portion of its water wealth is underutilized or unusable. The region-wide irrigation network is dilapidated and inefficient, resulting in massive waste, whether through holes and design flaws in the irrigation network or pollution. Furthermore, the distribution of water in the area is strikingly uneven, leaving socioeconomically underprivileged areas deprived of access to clean water.
This decaying infrastructure puts pressure on the water distribution system. The upstream mountainous countries of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, which have the greatest flows and reserves of water, also use the least water. Mostly mountainous, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan do not have the terrain for agriculture; instead they use the water for hydropower. Meanwhile, the downstream countries of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan have a far smaller water supply but require much more water to irrigate their intensive agriculture.
To add further complications, the timing of water usage is inconveniently mismatched. The downstream countries need the water most during the summer, when agriculture is at its height, but during this same time, the upstream countries divert more water to their reserves. These reserves are released through the dams in the winter when the upstream countries need more energy but the downstream countries don’t need more water. The Central Asian supranational organization in charge of water management, the International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea, has made some progress in coordinating management activities, yet regional politics impede collaboration, which is simultaneously becoming more necessary and more difficult in the face of future water shortages.
Central Asia, which was the poorest region of the former Soviet Union, suffers from chronic political turbulence. In tandem with a decline in natural resources, this turbulence may precipitate a positive feedback loop, aggravating both political and ecological conditions. Central Asia’s unsavory sociopolitical situation is an example of the deleterious effects of superimposed borders.
The Fergana Valley, the fertile agricultural hub of the region, which had been historically been owned by a single political entity, was divided up, irrespective of natural borders, into the three separate ethnic republics of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan by Josef Stalin. However, these borders were not drawn precisely according to ethnic distributions. Each of the three countries contains significant minority groups of the other two countries. Thus, unsurprisingly, conflicts in the Fergana Valley are not uncommon. Uzbekistan invaded Kyrgyzstan momentarily in June 2010, withdrawing quickly due to Russian disapproval, but ethnic enmity continues to run high. More than just a hotspot for ethnic tension, the valley hosts radical Islamist groups, such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which have carried out several attacks in the region. Each country has its own internal issues as well; for example, Kyrgyzstan has had two revolutions in the past 10 years.
This regional instability catalyzes resource conflicts. Tajik and Kyrgyz villagers regularly squabble over water resources on the border. Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan have recently engaged in a spate of soft power attacks. Kyrgyzstan’s plans to build hydroelectric dams threatened Uzbekistani agriculture. To deter this, Uzbekistan cut off its natural gas supply to Osh, a major city in Kyrgyzstan. Kyrgyzstan responded with threats of cutting off water. The current Uzbek-Kyrgyz gas-water deal, which involves Kyrgyzstan releasing more water than it needs to in the summer for Uzbek energy in the winter, is largely win-win and yet such spiteful instances occur, demonstrating the influence of non-economic factors in impeding resource management.
Butterfly Effect
If Zeihan’s apocalyptic prophecy is correct, then once the water runs dry, the tens of millions of people living in southern Central Asia will have nowhere to go. To the west is the Caspian Sea, to the east are the deserts of Chinese Xinjiang (which suffers from enough ethnic turbulence as it is), and to the south are the northern mountains of Afghanistan (which isn’t particularly strong on its pull factors). To the north are the railroads running through Kazakhstan to Russia, and Russia simply can’t support a refugee population potentially larger than a quarter of its own. This leaves countless refugees stranded in a cauldron of political upheaval, economic disaster, and ecological tragedy. Given the estimates of most other experts, this catastrophe seems unlikely to happen according to Zeihan’s projected time, but the possibility remains unsettling. At the very least, resource scarcity in conjunction with population growth in this region presents a serious existential danger for regional governments and the livelihoods of millions. And thus we are compelled to ask, “All this for what?” Well, the Soviet Union really wanted its cotton.
Image Credits: Christopher Staecker/Wikimedia Commons, User hypatia callisto/flickr
Update (11/2/15, 1:08 p.m.): This article has been updated from an earlier version.